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WILLIAM HOOPER, 

Sir.xKR OF THE Declaration of Independence. 



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ADDEESS 



EDWIN A. ALDERMAN, 

Pr«ifes.H(ir in the Univeri>'Hy of Xorth Cfirolhin. 



ON THE LIFE OF 



WILLIAM LIOOPER, 



'The Prophet of American Independence.' 



GUILFORD BATTLE GROUJSTD, 

JULY 4, 1894. 



Published by Die Guilford Battle Groioid Co7tif>a7iy, 






ISSUED FROM THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 

Chapel Hill, N. C. 



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^^0(^3 





My Countrymen : 

There is no hig-her duty devolving- upon faithful 
States than to preserve freshly the memory of their 
g'reat events and their noble men. And it is not simply a 
duty. It is a condition of national g-reataess and the 
sublimest evidence of the moral energy latent in demo- 
cratic communities. The most splendid manif-estation 
of the awakening- of historical self-respect in North 
Carolina, and of new-born pride in her heroic past is 
this scene before our eyes — these upturned faces with 
the unspoken music of liberty on their lips ; this lovely 
landscape filled with the glory of midsummer; these 
votive stones crowning- hill-top and valley, marking- the 
rescue of a great American battle-lield from the silent 
forest; this transformation, by patriotic energ-3', of an 
unkempt wilderness into a g-rand Pantheon for our hon- 
ored dead more impressive than the marble memorials 
of Greece and Rome because its roof is the arch of the 
sky, and its pillars these stately oaks that sweep the 
upper air. 

It is no slig-lit thing to have such a spot as this in the 
borders of a State. Here our fathers dared to die 
that we, their children, mig-htbe free. Here amid the 
uproar of battle, the course of human history received 
moulding and direction. The lofty, majestic charm 
which invests the Thermopyla^s, the Watt-rioos, the 
Yorktowns and Bunker Hills — all spots where human 
freedom has made a stand — is beg-inning^ to settle over 
this lovely plain where our embattled farmers stood. 
Let us be glad that our people are coming- hither more 
and more, from far and near, to spend their hours of rest 
and freedom from care and work. Let them come, the 



old man in his weakness, the youth in his strength, 
and the young- child standing- upon the lintels of life, 
and be lifted up by the memories, the associations, the 
sig-hts of this sacred g-round into nobler ambition, purer 
zeal and more unselfish consecration to that g-oodly 
heritag'e g-iven us by the Lord God, and pledged to 
civilization by the lives, the fortunes and the sacred 
honor of an heroic ancestry! 

For seven years tiie anniversary of our g"reat National 
Ffstival has been celebrated liere with much display 
of patriotic enthusiasm and martial pomp. Heretofore, 
the learned and distinguished men who have preceded 
me in the g-racious duties of this hour have had for a 
theme some brave North Carolinian who illustrated her 
valor and devotion in arms. To-day, for the first time, 
we meet to tell tlie story of a civic hero, to witness the 
inaug'uration of a monument to him and his colleag'ues, 
and to recount faithfully the life and character of one 
whose clear, bold signature to the Declaration of 
American Independence enrolls the name of William 
Hooper forever among- the founders of this republic. 

The Hi^oper family is an ancient and honorable one in 
English and Scotch annals. In Fox's Book of Martyrs 
one mav read how on the 9th of February, 1555, John 
Hooper, Lord Bishopof Worcester and Gloucester, suf- 
fered martyrdom iwdv the doors of his own catliedral. 
The brave old ir!art}r was one of a numerous family of 
Hoopers who had been settled in Somersetshire since 
the reign of Kdv/ard, the First. They were in many 
instances tenants of the Priory of Montacute and 
priests oi that loundation. In tlio troublesome days 
that followed the accession ol' Mary and the Martyr- 
dom of Bishop Hooper, the Hoopers of Wiltshire, 
a shire contiguius to Somerset, migrated to the bor- 



ders of Scotland Tlie name until the time of William 
Hooper of Boston, was spelled Hoper, Hopper, Hou- 
per. The martvr-hishop sig^ned his name "John 
Hoper" in the dedication of his works to the DLd\e 
of Somerset. The Hoopers were lon,fjf settled at 
Stitchell, a town in Berwick, Scotland, and seem 
to have mi<»Tated from that point to different places 
in the neigfhborhood. There lies before me a pho- 
to^Taph of a quaint old monument outside the chan- 
cel of Stitchell"' church, known as the "Hooper 
Stone." The inscription is incomplete, but one may 
still decipher on the upper slab some names and lig*- 
ures and this triumphant sentiment: 

Vita mihi mortis mors 
Vitae janiia facta est. 

The first one f)f the name whom we can find is Rob- 
ert Hooper, A. M., of Nether Stitchell, who died in 
159f), leaving" seven children. There is a record of 
his son and heir, Robert, and then the reiLfisters are 
lost until there appears a^^ain the name of Robert 
Hooper. The Rev. William Hooper of Boston, the 
founder of the American branch of the family, was the 
third and young-est child of this Robertus Hopperus, as 
his name is written when he taices his deg^ree of A. M. 
at Kdinburg-h, and Mary Jaffra3^ his wife, who were 
married August 2, 1692. 

He was born in the villag^e of Edenmouth — a farm 
at the junction of the Eden with the Twt-ed — Par- 
ish of F/dnam near Kelso, Scotland, in the year 1704; 
took his Master ot Arts degree at Edinburgh in 
1723; became a Presbyterian minister in Scotland; 



See Appendix for g-enealogical chart of Hooper family; 



came to America, settled in Boston and was the 
first pastor of the Vv^est Congregationalist Church 
from 1737 to 1747, and of Trinity Church from 1747 
to 1767, the 3'ear of his death. His sudden secession 
from the Cono-regational Church after nine years of ser- 
vice, and entrance into the Episcopal Church, surprised 
and grieved his con^'reg'atiou, and no doubt produced 
some asperities in those days of dog-matic severity. 
The truth seerns to be that Hooper outgfrew the stern 
puritanic creed of the day, and wished to preach a 
more liberal conception of the divine attributes. Dr. 
Bartol, one of his successors in the West Church, from 
which he seceded, speaks with g-reat feeling- of Hooper 
and his character:* "I claim not Hooper as one of the 
g"reat reformers who are voices in the wilderness of 
the ag-es, but I do rank him in the class of intellectual 
and relig"ious pioneers. He had a nature whose first 
necessity, like that of all g"reat natures, was confor- 
mity between its thoug'ht and actions." The late 
Bishop Phillips Brooks, before his elevation to the 
episcopate, one of Hooper's successors in the rectorship 
of Trinity Church, wrote of him as follows: "The 
Rev. Willam Hooper had been pastor of the West 
Cong-regational Church since it was formed in 1737. 
Suddenly in 1847 he became an Episcopalian. He 
had been beloved and honored, and everybod}'^ was 
taken by surprise. At once the proprietors of Trinity 
Church chose him to be their Rector and he went to 
England for orders. He retained his parish twentv 
years, and then died suddenly while walking- in Lis 
g-arden. He chang-ed partly because of the arg-ument 
for Episcopacy, but mainly because of the more liberal 



"West Church and Jts ministers," p. 67. Boston, 1856. 



theolog-y. It does not seem strang-e to us that our 
second Rector was father of one of the sig-ners of the 
Declaration." 

The Episcopal Orders of the Rev. Wm. Hooper still 
exist, much mutilated, as may be seen, but leg^ible. 
The orig-inal document is now in the possession of Mr. 
James Hooper, of Wilming-ton, N. C, is dated June, 
1747, and reads as follows : 

By or of these presents. We Martin, by 

Divine po Glocester do make it known unto all tnen 

that on f June (being- Tuesday in Whitsun-Week) in the 

year of Ou and seven hundred and fortj'-seven, We the Bishop 

before in administring- Holy Orders under the protection of 

the Aim f Chapel of St. James in Westminster did 

awarding- eremonies of the Church of Eng-land admit Our 

beloved m Hooper. M. A., of Boston in New Bng-land 

to the H ests he being- well recommended to Us by our 

Rig-ht Rev Edmund Lord Bishop of Loudon who certified to 

us his exam probation of the said William Hooper in regard 

to his ag-e ng and Title and having first before us taken 

the Oaths the Articles which are in this case by Laws 

required to b and subscribed and that We did then and 

there dulj' and nominally ordain him Priest. In Testimony 
whereof We have used Our Episcopal Seal to be hereunto affixed. 
Dated the Day and Year aforesaid, and in the Thirteenth Year of 
our Consecration. 

M. [SEAiv] GLOCESTER. 

The Rev. William Hooper married Mary Den- 
nie, daug-hter of John Dennie, an eminent Boston mer- 
chant. His will mentions five children, William, John, 
Georg-e, Mary, and Thomas as the result of this union, 
three of whom, William, the eldest, Georg-e and Thom- 
as came South. Georg-e settled in Wilming-ton, mar- 
ried Catherine Maclaine, daug-hter of Archibald Mac- 
laine, an eminent lawyer and patroit of his day, and be- 
came the father of Archibald Maclaine Hooper, and 



s 



grandfather of the late John DeBerniere Hooper of the 
University of North Carolina, an eminent and accom- 
plished scholar/'^ 

Mrs. Ralph H. Graves of Chapel Hill, owns a hand- 
some oil painting- of this stout-hearted old man, who 
did not hesitate in an ag-e of gfreat polemic rig-or, to de- 
clare for independence of opinion and freedom of con- 
science as his son did later for freedom in forms of gfov- 
ernment. It is a strong-, beautiful face, marked by 
lines of power and benig-nity. 

William Hooper, whose life and services it is our pur- 
pose to investigfate, was born in Boston, Massachusetts 
June 17, 1742. There was then no foreboding: of the 
coming- storm. The thirteen colonies were the most 
loyal dependencies of the Engflish Crown, and the col- 
onists read Kng-lish books, talked Engdish g-ossip, flush- 
ed with pride at the achievements of Engdish prowess 
and proudly recounted the muniments of Eng-lish free- 
dom. The ties of a common ancestry, a common re- 
ligfion, a common pride of race, a common lang^uagfe, 
common political traditions, and a common share in the 
memories of the past and the hopes of the future bound 
the infant colonies to the fatherland. Boston, at his 
birth, was a thriving- little town of fifteen thousand in- 
habitants. Samuel Adams had just passed from the 
Harvard rostrum to the larg-er rostrum of the town 
meeting-; a few miles away at Braintree, John Ad- 
ams, a seven year old child, played in the fields, while 
in far off Virg-inia, Washing-ton and Patrick Henrv, 
the one the arm, the other the tongue of the Revo- 
lution, had not passed out of childhood. 

It may be imag-ined that a Scotch minister would 
not negflect the education of his -on. William Hooper 

*See Appendix. 



9 



passed the flrst fourteen years of his life .in assiduous 
devotion to study, seven years under his father and 
seven years at the Boston Latin School, presided over 
by John Lovel, the most celebrated school master of his 
day. In 1757 at the ag^e of fifteen he entered the Soph- 
omore class at Harvard Colleg-e, a delicate, nervous, 
beautiful youth, spurred on to academic honors by his 
father's pitiless Scotch enthusiasm for learning-. The 
Harvard records of that day are quite frag^mentary and 
chiefly concerned with questions of punishment and dis- 
cipline. The infrequent appearance of Hooper's name 
on this criminal docket is, at least, /r/;«»y«67^ evidence 
of the blamelessness of his coUegre life. There are only 
two records concerning* him upon the books of Har- 
vard Colleg^e, viz: 

"July 13th, 1757. Voted to examine Rev. Mr. 
Hooper's son to be admitted to the second year." 

"Oct, 7th. 1757, Ho<oper placed in Sophomore Year 
to take place after John Lowell."* 

As a sig-nal instance of the aristocratic spirit of the 
agfe, it may be mentioned that students then took prece- 
dence nut by right of ability or scholarship or alpha- 
betical priority, but according- to the social standing- of 
their parents, carefully 'determined by a committee of 
the Faculty, According; to this arrang-ement. Hooper 
ranked eighth in a class of twenty-seven. Five years 
before, John Adams had ranked fourteenth in a class of 
twenty-four, — being", unlike Hooper, a trifle nearer the 
bottom than the top. Hooper was g"raduated in 1760 v^ith 
the deg-ree of Piachelor of Arts, and in 1763 received 
the deg-ree of Master of Arts, earning- the reputation of 
a devoted student and especially distinguishing; himself 

*Private letter from Wm. H. Tilling'hast, Assistant Librarian of 
Harvard University. 



10 

in lanofuag-e, literature and oratory. The first Item of 
the Rev. William Hooper's will recites: ' 'I gWv to my eld- 
est son, William, all my Books and Manuscripts, which, 
with the money I expended on his education at Colleg-e, 
will be more than I have to leave to any one oi the rest 
of my children." The privileg-e of a g-ood education, 
it would seem., was the only advantag-e of primogvni- 
ture in those days, and the father who conferred this 
unusual equipment upon his son considered liis parental 
debt well discharg-ed. The young- m,an himself lay un- 
der a sort of moral oblig-ation to adopt one of the pro- 
fessions, of law% medicine or divinity. Hooper chose 
law against the desire of his father, who had marked 
him for the ministry, and about the year 17()i entered 
the law-otTice of James Otis, the most brilliant lawyer 
in Massachusetts. This was the turning- point in Hoop- 
er's life. It is true that when he was introduced to the 
bar of his native province he found it overflowing- and 
poverty drove him to seek his fortune in a distant col- 
ony. It is also true that influential friends in the prov- 
ince of North Carolina induced him to settle tempora- 
ril}' at Wilming-fon on the Cape Fear in the year 1764, 
and that the death of his fatiier forced him to adopt 
Wilming-fon as his permanent home. And it would 
seem that these unforeseen ag-encies were most potential 
in shaping- his life, but I hold them not comparable in 
serious influence to the fact that he entered life in 
17(>1 under the tuition of James Otis, and in the atmos- 
phere of Boston, electric with thoug-ht of hum.an free- 
dom. The elder Hooper was a loyalist and a man oi gfreat 
force of character. William alone, of all his family, em- 
braced the patriot cause. In the council chamber of 
the Old Town House in Boston, in February, 1761, 
James Otis made his wonderful five-hour speech — one 



11 



of the greatest speeches of modern times — against the 
abominable tyranny of the Writs of Assistance. Then 
and there was the first scene of the first act of oppo- 
sition to the arbitrary claims of Great Britain in the 
northern colonies. "Then and there the child Inde- 
pendence was born.""'^ Then and there William Hoop- 
er became a patriot. John Adams and William Hooper, 
the one a young lavv3^er, the other : law student, stood 
in the chamber and listened with beating hearts to the 
the thrilling words of the g^reat orator, as a few 
years later Jefferson was to stand tip- toe in the old 
court room at Williamsburg vind hear Patrick Henry 
echo Otis with tongue of flame. It is worthy of note 
that the preliminary scenes of the Revolution occurred 
in court rooms and the first voices lifted for liberty 
were the voices of lawyers, despising fees, heedless of 
the whispers of ambition, and pleading madlv for ab- 
stract human right. 

In the fall of 1767 when liberty was flaming' like a 
beacon over the land, William Hooper came into our 
state to make his permanent home. He was in his 
twenty-iifth year, a son of Harvard, thrilling- w^ith the 
eloquence of Otis and Samuel Adams, familiar with 
the methods of the town meeting, happy in the choice 
of his home, blessed with youth and vig-or in the bril- 
liant dawn of a revolutionary era. 

Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive 
But to be young- was Heaven. 

North Carolina had k'nown one hundred 3'^ears of 
stormy political existence at the hour of his coming. It 
cannot be said that the State had been founded by any- 

*John Adams. • 



12 



body. It had founded itself, and ha.d grown into the 
sisterhood of colonies from a few scattered families on 
the Albemarle, sternly fig-iitin^^ the cruel savag"es on the 
one hand and as sternly resisting*- on the other, the ra- 
pacity and cupidity of proprietary <i:"overnors. Two 
hundred and fifty thousand people then occupied the 
territory between the mouths of the Cape Fear, the 
Chowan, the Neuse, and the head waters of the 
Catawba and the Yadkin. It was a composite popula- 
tion, embracing" the strong-est strains of many stocks 
and uniting- ever}^ fyp^ ^^ race, character and every 
shade of political belief in northern and western 
Kurope — the Teuton, the Celt, the Saxon. Men of 
Eng"lish birth, and breeding- searching- for gfood "bot- 
tom lands" came over from Virg-inia and seated 
themselves along- the Tar, the Albermarle, and the 
Neuse. The sturdy Scotch-Irish had been pouring- 
over the mountains from Pennsylvania and Virg-inia 
into the middle and Piedmont sections f(^r a g-eneration. 
West of Morg-anton a silent forest stretched away to 
the Smoky mountains, where later, Daniel Boone, bear- 
ing* civilization westward, was to wander like some 
hero out of mytholog-y. Six strag'g-ling- hamlets, Wil- 
ming-ton, Newbern, Edenton, Hillsboro, Halifax and 
Salisbury, rang-ing- in population from seven hundred 
downward, had reached the dignity of boroug-hs. It 
was an agricultural community and therefore simple, 
pure and poor. The absence of the newspaper and the 
universal presence of abominable roads accentuated ra- 
cial differences, and the wealthy, educated dweller on 
the coast, the shrewd landowner in the lowlands, the 
sturdy Germanic individualities of the middle country, 
the isolated pioneers of the pine forests had not yet 



13 



been fused even into partial unity by the cohesive en- 
erg-}^ of war and invasion. 

Man}'^ schohirly men like John Fiske and James Gil- 
more and Henry Cabot Lodjjfe have sneered at and be- 
littled this first century of North Carolina histor3\ 
Those sneers will ^;tand between them and hig-h his- 
torical fame in da^^s to come. They will have to bear 
the reproach of having- missed the thread of polit- 
ical development in the sturdiest and freest conimon- 
weath in Nortli America. The key to North Caro- 
lina character in this inchoate period is the subor- 
dination of everything- — material prosperity, per- 
sonal ease, fin'ancial dev'clopment — to the remorseless 
assertion of the sacredness of chartered rights against 
the insolent and greedy encroachments of the carpet- 
bag--proconsuls of the proprietary and royal g-overn- 
ments. Something- of the frenzied berserker rag-e and 
wild, dauntless individuality of their barbarian fore- 
fathers shouting along' the frontiers of imperial Rome, 
manifested itself in the ruthless ease with which the 
early Carolinians arose and set aside a tyrannical ruler, 
laughed in his baffled face and accounted his threats 
and the muttering-s of his masters across the seas as of 
no more import than the plaints of a "ballad sing-er. " 
Our pre-revolutionary history is one long- schooling- 
ag-ainst unjust oppression. If, in their remoteness and 
isolation, our ancestors ever strayed into lawlessness, it 
was the light struck from violated law by the mailed 
hand of oppression that lead them astray. In the year 
1678 when a few families were strug-gding- into a 
counsciousness of statehood along- the wide waters of 
our eastern sounds they submitted this sentiment, 
worthy of a place in the very heart of Mag-na Charta, 
to an oppressive g-overnor. "The doctrine of non-resist- 



14 



ance against arbitrary power and oppression is ab- 
surd, slavish and destructive to the good and happiness 
of mankind.""^ As early as 1716, when the colony had 
been in existence barely fifty years, and the population 
all told, young and old, men and women, black and 
white, was only eight thousand, when the Neuse was 
the frontier and the Cape Pear a howling wilderness, 
they entered upon the Journals of their Assembly in so 
many words, the formal declaration "that the impress- 
ing of the inhabitants or their property under pretense 
of its being for the public service, without authority 
from the Assembly, was unwarrantable and a great in- 
fringement of the liberty of the subject, "t As late as 
1760 the Assembly formally declared that it was the 
indubitable right of the Assembly to frame and model 
every bill whereby aid was granted to the King, and 
that every attempt to deprive them of the enjoyment 
thereof was an infringement of the rights and privi- 
leges of the Assembly. t And in November, 1764, 
" taking into consideration His Excellency's speech," 
in which he had asserted prerogative very strongly, 
and in reply thereto, the Assembly entered upon its 
Journal a peremptory order that the Treasurer should 
not pay out any money b}- order of the Governor and 
the Council without the concurrence of the Assembly. >j 
Five times before the storm of revolution swept over 
the state, in the Rent trouble, the Legislative Repre- 
sentation trouble, the Granville District trouble, or 
the Enfield riots as they were called, the Stamp Act 
trouble and the War of the Regulation, the self-willed 

■•'Colonial Records Vol, IX. p. II. Prefatory Note.s. 

f L,essons from Colonial Records. Wai. h. Saunders, p. 7. 

|Ibid 

§Ibid. • 



15 



and power-hating" lawyers and farmers of North Caro- 
lina had anticipated Bunker Hill, Lexington and their 
own Mecklenburgf in their willingfiiess to die in behalf of 
the abstract idea of local self-g-overnnient. Their 
motives were not commercial. No ships rotted in 
their harbors, they had no manufactures to lang^uish, 
no carrying- trade to be ruined. Their conduct was 
simply a pure and priceless demonstration of the polit- 
ical gfenius and self-governinfjf passion of the Ang-lo- 
Saxon race. 

There was no room then for missionary work on the 
Cape Fear when William Hooper cast in his fortunes 
with her defiant sons. They were already rebels by 
habit and descent, and had already made bonfires of 
stamped paper, intimidated stamp masters and g^overn- 
ors and oifered armed resistance to British force.* Cor- 
nelius Harnett and Samuel Adams were kindred spirits 
and John Ashe and James Otis had both thundered the 
doctrine of "resistance to blood and death." 

In the six 3'ears intervening between his permanent 
settlement in Wilmington and his entrance into public 
life. Hooper endeared himself by his natural grace of 
manner and easy wit to the unusual group of strong, 
bright hospitable lawyers and planters seated about 
Wilmington and Brunswick. Wilmington was a vil- 
lage to be proud of in the youth of a new civilization, 
when men have sterner things to do than to cultivate 
art and letters. Its commerce with the West Indies in 
naval stores, rice and indigo was considerable. Along 
the eastern and western branches of the Cape Fear 
lived men of fortune and education connected by blood, 
owning slaves and living the semi-feudal life of the time. 

And they were not mere jovial, unlettered planters 

* "A Colonial Officer," pp. 87-89. Waddell. Wilmington. 



16 



engrossed in the pleasures of the chase and the field. 
They had established a small library in the little vil- 
lag-e, and in their own homes, broug-ht over from Eng- 
land, were the works of Dryden and Pope and Johnson 
and Addison — side by side with those of Fielding-, Rich- 
ardson and Smollett. We may not doubt that Hooper 
both extended and partook of the somewhat excessive 
hospitality of the region, for it was a fun-loving- ag-e. 
A lawyer, especially a married law^yer away from home, 
would ride ten miles out of his way and swim a stream 
to reach a dance, and court weeks in Wilming-ton were 
sometimes sig-nalized by ten consecutive balls, and by 
much consumption of Jamaica rum. But amidst all 
this g-allantry and ceremonious merry-making-, the 
young- Boston lawyer did not foreg-o the serious side of 
life. He laid well and thoroug-hly the foundations of 
his professional reputation. We find him early in his 
career riding- one hundred and eig-hty miles on horse back " 
to attend the courts in the interior, measuring- swords 
with Maurice Moore in New Hanover, t and fig-hting- 
Abner Nash and a number of strongf lawyers in Halifax 
in the celebrated cause of the heirs of Governor Dobbs 
ag-ainst Nash, who had married the widow of that 
amorous old g-entleman.t 

It is no discredit to William Hooper — as it is none to 
Maurice Moore and to the knig-htliest soldier of the col- 
ony, Hug-h Waddell, — to record that in 1770 he warm- 
ly aided the g-overnment in suppressing- the insurg-ents 
who were known by the name of the Reg-ulators. The 



* Wm. H. Hill owned the first four horse coach in New Hanover 

county. Iredell's Life and Letters. 
f State V. McGaflford. A master had murdered his slave. Hooper 

appeared for defendant. 
X In Halifax Court. A. M. Hooper. 



17 



isolation, the difference in the condition of the sections, 
and the g-ame of diplomacy between Tr3'on and the 
eastern leaders prevented those men from seeing that 
the men of Orange and Guilford were pioneers in the 
hoh' war for freedom, toward which they themselves 
were snrely tending-."' The}' saw only the frenzy and 
passion of maddened men defying established law, and 
heard only the blatant voice of the demagogue and ex- 
tremist who play about every great movement. That 
such men rode to war with Tryon, or gave advice in 
council against the harried farmers of the middle coun- 
ties, is the best evidence we could have of the absence 
of those cohesive elements in our colonial life, by which 
diverse peoples and interests are welded into unity and 
homogeneity. 

William Hooper, after six 3'ears' residence in the 
colony, entered public life in 1773 as a member from 
Cambellton of the General Assendily which met at 
Newbern January 25, 1773. and continued in session 
forty-two days. I" For the first time he was 
thrown into close official connection with Samuel Jolm- 
ston, John Harvey, Richard Caswell, ^Mlen Jones, 
John Ashe, Francis Nash and those who were destined 
to be our revolutionary leaders. Josiah Martin, the 
last royal g"overnor of this province, was at the head 
of affairs. The general acts of British aggression all 
over the continent were, for the moment, lost sight of, 
and North Carolina was engaged in a furious strug'gle 
over the enactment of a new court law to succeed 
the Tryon Act, just expired. The issue, briefly, was 
this: the governor of North Carolina, the authorities 

* Colonial Records, Vol. VIII. p. III. 

I Mr. Hooper received 20 1. 5 s. and 8 d. for his services. Col. Rec. 
V. 9, p. 587. 



18 



in E^n^land and the Kng-lish merchants wished to do 
business and own property here without beiu.cj- subject to 
our laws. The North Carolina Assembly, represent- 
ing the creditors of British merchants, were iig'hting' 
to secure the right to proceed by attachment against 
the property of debtors who had never been in the 
province, or who had fled from their debts. It is not 
within the scope of this address to narrate the details of 
the struggle. It was the last irritating act of Eng- 
lish economic cupidity, directed against her iniant 
colony, and around it raged the fire of debate for the 
three sessions of the Assembly which met in Newberu 
January 25, 1873, December 4, 1873 and March 2, 
1874, consuming in its discussion eighty-seven legisla- 
tive days. The Assembly was unyielding, Martin 
obeyed his instructions like a martinet, all compromise 
failed, and the result was that there were no courts in 
North Carolina from March 30, 1774 until after 
North Carolina had become a sovereign State, in 1777. 
William Hooper took a foremost part in the deliber- 
ations of all of these sessions, ^ — being a member of the 
last two with John Ashe, from the County of New 
Hanover. He was placed on the fourteen most impor- 
tant committees of these Assemblies, " formed, prepared 
and read the address in repU^ to the Governor's speech 
in both Assemblies, and in addition to much local effort, 
procured the passage of the bill to prevent the willful 
and malicious killing of slaves, i" and the bill to relieve 
insolvent debtors with respect to imprisonment of 
their persons. Hooper was the writer of these bodies. 
Harvey and Harnet were readier with their tongues 



* See Appendix for list of Committees. 

f He always exhibited considerable interest in the condition of the 
slave* 



19 

than with their pens, and we may be sure the fluent 
3"Oung" scholar g'ladly seiz.ed the opportunity to formu- 
late their swift thouo-hts. Hooper also carried his 
literary activity outside of legislative halls, and though 
the failure of the court bills deprived him of his only 
source of income, justified their defeat in the once cele- 
brated Hampden essays, which profoundly impressed 
his contemporaries but have not come down to us. 
Amid the noisy tumult over the court bill, the Assem- 
bly of December, 1774 stepped aside on December 8,_^ J^ 
and did its most far-reaching" act, in the appointment of 
nine persons to constitute a standing committee of Cor- 
respondence and Inqviiry, whose duty it should be to 
obtain the earliest and most authentic intelligence of 
all acts and resolutions of the British Parliament re- 
lating to the colonies, and to maintain and keep up a 
correspondence with our sister colonies respecting all 
important considerations. William Hooper was the 
fourth name on this committee, preceded by John Har- 
vey, Robert Howe and Cornelius Harnett. " This was by 
far the most important step that preceded indepen- 
dence. It was the corner-stone of the Revolution, an "^-^ — 
invisible legislature that was alwa3's in session!" and 
could not be dissolved. Through its silent agencies 
the mystic chain of sympathy uniting the colonies was 
completed, and every pulse-beat of Massachusetts 
throbbed throughout America. 

It is from Josiah Quinc}^ that we get our only 
^•limpse of thcvse men outside of meagre legislative pro- 
ceedings. His Journal reveals them jauntily dining 
and wining and plotting. 



* John Harve3% Robert Howe, Cornelius Harnett, William Hooper, 
Richard Caswell, Edward Vail, John Ashe. Joseph Hewes, Samuei 
Johnston. "Jones's Defence," p. 98. 

f John Fiske, "War for Independence," p- 79. 



20 

"March 29th, (1773). Dined at Dr. Thomas Cob- 
ham's in company with Harnett, Hooper and others. 

March 30th: Dined with about twenty at Mr. Wil- 
liam Hooper's— find him apparently in the Whig" inter- 
est — has taken their side in the House etc. 

Spent the nig-ht at Mr. Harnett's— the Samuel Ad- 
ams of North Carolina. 

The plan of Continental Correspondence hio-hly rel- 
ished, much wished for, and resolved upon as proper 
to be pursued."'' 

In the Summer of 1774, as a result of a conference 
between five!" pioneer patriots who did not intend that 
Martin should imitate Try on, hand bills flew over 
North Carolina invitino- the people to elect deleg-ates to 
a convention for the purpose of denouncing' the retalia- 
tion acts of Great Britain, and electing delegcites to a 
Continental Cong-ress. In midsummer, July 21 1774, 
we find William Hooper presiding- over the meeting- of 
the delegates from the six counties which formed the 
district of Wilming-ton., g-athered tog-ether to demand 
the calling- of this convention, to educate pidilic senti- 
ment, and to pronounce the cause of Boston the cause 
of British America.:',: And they were not content with 
mere words of sympathy. Georgfe William Curtis de- 
clared that the people of Pittsfield, Mass., a poor town 
of nine hundred inhabitants were afire with patriotism 
because they sent their suffering- brothers in Boston 
six potmds, twelve sliilling-s. How ma}' we gfauge the 
patriotic fervor of the little villag-e of Wilmingfton, six 
hundred miles away, containing- only six hundred in- 

^Meinoirs of Josiah Quincj', Col. Rec. V. 9, p. 611. 
f Harvey, Johnston, Hooper. Iredell, Willie Jones. Johnston to 
Hooper. "Jones's Defence," p 124. 

:t:Goodloe,s "Birth of the Republic" p. 299. 



21 

habitants, seiidiiio- two ship-loads of provisions and 
2,000 pounds in currency?* 

In one month's notice seventy members were elected 
and assembled in Newbern i)i the first representative 
asseml)ly, indepe)nie)it cuid dejiant of royal aiitJioritv, 
thai ever assembled in North America:\ Bold John 
Harvey, with the hectic flush of approaching- death 
on his cheek, ofuided the proceeding's. For three days, 
in higdi debate, these seventy men censured, denounced 
and resolved after the stately fashion of the times; 
elected their continental deleg^ates;! entrusted the exe- 
cution of their resolves to county committees; and ended 
with these noble and notable resolutions: 

''Resolved, That we view the attempts made b}^ the 
Ministers upon the town of Boston as a prelude to a gen- 
eral attack upon the rights of the other Colonies, and 
that upon the success of this depends, in a gxeat meas- 
ure, the happiness of America in its present race and in 
posterity; and that therefore it becomes our duty to 
contribute, in proportion to our abilities, to ease the 
burden imposed upon that Town, for their virtuous op- 
position to the Revenue Acts, that the}^ may be enabled 
to persist in a prudent and manly opposition to the 
schemes of Parliament, and render its dang-erous de- 
sigMis abortive. 

''Resolved, That Liberty is the spirit of the British 
Constitution, and that it is the duty, and will be the 
endeavor of us all, to transmit this happy Constitution 
to our posterit}' in a state, if possible, better than we 

••//*/«', p. 293. 

■jNewbern, Aug- 25, 1774. 

:}:The three delegates were to be paid 700 lbs. "proc."' money to be 
divided equally among- them — each county raising 20 lbs — not as a 
salary but as a "recompense" for trouble and expense. Col. Rec. 
V. 9, p. 1047. 



22 

found it; and that to suffer it to undergo a diange 
which may impair that invaluable blessin<Jf, would be 
to disgrace those ancestors who at the expense of their 
blood, purchased those privileg-es, which their degen- 
erate posterity are too weak or too wicked to maintain 
inviolate."""" 

It is difficult to mark the birth hour of any g-reat mov- 
ment, but it maj^ be said that no retrogTessive steps 
were taken in North Carolina after this midsummer 
meeting-. The fig-ht was on to the finish. Few things 
are more inspiring- in human history than the thrilling- 
rise of a sturdy people, fit for freedom, with calm, well- 
judged words on their lips, and with brig-ht bayonets 
in their hands. The American Revolution was not a 
strife between countries and peoples, but between par- 
ties and principles for the same priceless treasure — the 
bright inheritance of Eng-lish freedom. Pitt, in the 
British Parliament, thanked (yod that the American 
colonies would fight, and Fox on the same high arena, 
eulogized, in splendid words, the heroic Montgomery 
who had fallen on the heights of Quebec. This, then, 
was no mere vulgar war between antagonistic races, 
whether in England or America. It was the trium- 
phant culmination of the world-old fight against pre- 
rogative. Molasses Acts, Stamp Acts, Port Bills 
and all other bungling economic devices of stupid king's 
and servile Parliaments, driven on by the sordidness of 
commercialism and g"reed of gain, were mere irritants 
in the larger contest. The British were fighting the 
battles of the forum to regain from crowned divinity 
the liberty 'they had lost; the Americans were shed- 
ding their blood to keep the liberty they had always 
known. The spirit which resisted taxation without 

* "Jones's Defence" p. 142. 



23 



representation in America was the same which resisted 
loans, benevolences and ship money in iCngdand, Wash- 
ing-ton and Hampden and Pitt were patriots in a com- 
mon cause. The stern farmers of Yorktown and Guil- 
ford were the lineal descenda,nts of the Barons at Rim- 
nymede, and the men at Newbern and Hillsboro were 
treading- in the footsteps of their ancestors in the g-reat 
hall of William Rufus. 

There is nothing- tame or commonplace In the history 
of North Carolina during- the two and a quarter 3^ears 
intervening- between August 25, 1774, and December 18, 
1776. It is the epic period in our life — a revelation of 
the furious energ-y latent in a quiet people. The dear 
old commonwealth stands forth, clad in more heroic g-arb 
than she has ever worn, save, perhaps, a century later, 
when the seeds of disunion, sown by ancestral coward- 
ice in the national constitution, having- fruited into hor- 
rid war, she tiirned aside from the safe middle paths of 
peace and dig-nity she loves so well to tread, and 
wroug-ht like an unwearied g-iant to stay the red fury 
of civil strife. 

Five Provincial Congfresses, called by her citizens 
met in the borders of the state in these eventful, 
revolutionary 5a"ars. Unmoved by consideration of 
g-ain or loss, with British fleets hovering- off her coasts, 
and sixteen hundred tories g-athering their clans for 
battle in her very heart, the men of Carolina, with 
serene and patient wisdom, g-uided the state throug-h 
the successive stag-es of self-defense, rebellion, provi- 
sional g-overnment and statehood. There was haste a 
plenty, but no confusion, no anarchy, no lawlessness. 
Coolly, calmly, swiftly, resting- their action upon faith in 
man, belief in God, and instinctive distrust of power, they 
sternly set their house in order for war with the mig-ht- 



24 



iest empire on earth, — their motherland; crushed, with 
quick and terrible promptitude, rebellion in their o^Yn 
limits, and vet maintained inviolate the sacredness snd 
dominance of civil law. No detail of administration 
escaped their notice, no adjustment of power to liberty 
remained unu-uarded, no question of human rig^hts went 
undiscussed. With the steadiness and precision of 
leg-al forms thev chased a tleeino- o-overnor from his 
palace, and with sublime satire ascribed the lej^'islative 
silence to his enforced absence." Troops were raised, 
money emitted, materials of war ^^athered tog'ether, a 
State created, whole in all its parts, the machiner}^ of 
statehood set in motion, the fabric of royal allejjfiance 
reduced to a mere shred of meanino-less theor3% with 
deliberate, circums])ect di,L;'nit\' in the short space of 
twenty days.t Nor is this the full recital of the 
achievements of these civic (^-iants in the American back- 
woods. They rejected premature Franklin confedera- 
tions, + they declared first of all American colonies, 
whether in the one county of Mecklenburg, or in open 
Assembly at Halifax, Aprin2, 177(), for immediate "in- 
dependency;"?; they ordained, wilh splendid sagacity, 
a university for the education of their posterity;'! and 
formulated, amid the hot clash of diverse ideas, a consti- 
tution, born of compromise and concession, and able to 
bear for two generations the steady strain of democratic 
institutions. 

Natural and noble and beautiful is the instinct which 
prompts us to idealize the past, but the grandeur of he- 



■^•Col. Records, Vol. 10, p. 164, Seq. p. 41 vSeq. 

jSee proceeding- of Hillsboro Congress, Aug-. 20, 1775, Col. Rec. V. 9. 

]:Proposed by Hooper by request, but not advocated by him. 

SApril 12, 1776, Col. Records, Vol 10, p. 512. 

II Halifax, Dec. 18, 1776, Col. Records, Vol. 10, p. 913. 



25 



roic action is in the deed, not in the distance. No epical 
exa^'g'eration or dramatic effect can accentuate this re- 
cital. Its impressiveness and force is inherent in the 
courag"e and faith and wisdom of the action and the 
ayents. With clear, concurrent purpose, beg"otten of 
j^'reat fortitude and g"reat love, these fearless, practical, 
level-eyed men performed a civic duty, and submitted 
their work to the ratification of remote <jfenerations. 

On Saturday, Aug-ust 27, 1774, William Hooper 
was elected a deleg'ate to the Continental Congress, 
under the following- resolution : 

A'effofi'ctf. That William Hooper, Joseph Hewes and Richard Cas- 
well, Esquires, and every one of them, be Deputies to attend the 
Continental Cong-ress, and they are hereby invested with such pow- 
ers as may make any act done by them or consent g^iven in behalf of 
this province, oblig-atorj' in honor upon every inhabitant thereof, who 
is not an alien to his country's good and an apostate to the liberties 
of America. 

Notwithstanding- the fact of this election, he was 
also elected a delegate to every one of the Provincial 
Cong-resses which ushered North Carolina into the 
family of States, and attended the sessions of every 
one of them except the Cong-ress of 1776, in Halifax, 
during- which he was in Philadelphia, the sole repre- 
sentative of North Carolina in the Continental Con- 
jjfress. These return trips from Philadelphia to the 
Provincial Cong-resses were usually made on horseback, 
and were formidable enoug-h — fording- streams, sleep- 
ing- in miserable inns, and taking- all sorts of weather. 
Hooper served on eleven committees In these four bodies, 
and as in the colonial legislatures, was In constant de- 
mand whenever it was desired to embody in fitting- 
words the thoughts and desires of the people.* He 

*See Appendix. 



26 



wrote the test-oath to be si|yned by members, prepared 
the celebrated address to the inhabitants of the British 
Empire intended to harmonize and unify public senti- 
ment,'^ and was added immediately upon his arrival in 
Halifax, Monday, April 15, 1776, to the most im- 
portant committee yet appointed in our annals — the 
committee to prepare a temporary civil constitution. 
The work of this committee, thoug-h it failed of adop- 
tion at this session, forms the basis of the instrument 
adopted five months later; and this in turn, influenced 
the instrument under which we live. By each of these 
bodies he was reelected to the Continental Cong'ress, 
and he and his colleag^ues formally and enthusiastically 
thanked for their patriotic services in and out of Con- 
g'ress.t 

In the interreg"num between the first and second ses- 
sions of the Continental Congress, his name appears 
upon the earliest recorded proceeding's of any commit- 
tee of safety, held in Wilming-ton, November 23, 1774.+ 
These committees constituted the executive arm of the 
provisional government, carrying out the commands of 
the Continental Cong'ress, and exercising a somewhat 
merciless police scrutiny over the actions of the entire 
community. 

The first Continental Congress, the ripened fruit of 
the Committees of Correspondence, assembled in Car- 
penter's Hall in Philadelphia on September 5, 1774. 
This Congress was a capital transaction in human 
affairs. It was an assemblage of the ambassadors of 
thirteen petty commonwealths g-athered together to 

*Col. Rec. Vol. 10, p. 174. Test oath, Vol. 10, p. 174. 

jTypical resolution of thanks. Col. Rec. Vol 9, p. 1181. 

^This Wilming-ton Committee was in session twenty-five times 
from Nov. 1774, until March, 1775. Hooper was continuously a mem- 
ber and attended thirteen sessions. Col. Rec. V. 9. 



27 



plead with decency and dio"nity for the largfest freedom 
of the individual, a.iyfainst the encroachments of heredi- 
tary prerojj-ative. These ambassadors did not at first 
come to act, but to entreat, to resolve, to petition, to pro- 
test. The choicest spirits of every colony were there. 
There was Wasliing^ton, erect and self-poised, ready 
for all thing's, save the splendor of his own immortality; 
there were the Adamses, impetuous, impulsive, curb- 
ing-, from prudential motives, their fiery spirits; there 
was the eloquent Lee, the illustrious prog^enitor of 
still more illustrious descendants; there was Henry, 
whose name one l)urning- phrase keeps fresh forever; 
there. Jay and Sherman and fifty others — children and 
g-rand-children of men who had glimpsed the g^olden 
vision of the digfnity of human nature and the essential 
equality of all men, and had wroug^ht for its realization 
unquailing^ly — some agfainst Charles in the Long- Par- 
liament, some under Cromwell in that sunrise hour at 
Dunbar, and some with William, the Silent, and the 
' ' Begrg^ars of the sea. " ' ' An asseniblag^e of demig^ods, " 
exclaimed Lord Broug"ham. "For myself," cried Lord 
Chatham in the British House of Lords, "I must de- 
clare and avow that in all my reading and observation — 
and I have read Thucydides, and have studied and ad- 
mired the master states of the world — that for solidit}^ 
of reasoning-, force of sagacity, and wisdom of con- 
clusion under such a complication of difficult cir- 
cumstances, no nation or body of men can stand in 
preference to the (xeneral Congress assembled at Phil- 
adelphia." 

Into this assembly came William Hooper and his 
colleagues, Joseph Hewes and Richard Caswell on 
Wednesday, September 14, 1774. It was Hooper's 
first entrance into that larg-er field of American political 



28 

life ill which he was destined to labor for the two most 
trying- 3^ears of our history. He was one of the very 
youngest men in a bod3% which, by aid of Franklin at 
seventy-one ,and Rutledge at twenty-six, represented 
all the adult generations of America. Imprevssive, even 
beautiful in person, cultured in manner, ready in speech, 
uniting- the culture of Harvard and the sturdy vigor of 
North Carolina, he was a fit representative of a mod- 
est state, lacking in forwardness then as now^ but 
which, for one hundred and ten years, had been hurling 
its chartered rights in the face of g'rasping rulers. 

It is not easy to reproduce the life of this great 
meeting. No stenographers or reporters then dogged 
the foot-steps of greatness, and profound secrecy in- 
vested the proceeding of all deliberative bodies. The 
Journal is but a naked narrative of resolutions oifered 
and passed, and documents prepared and adoj^ted. 
From this we learn that Mr. Hooper was immediately 
placed on the two most important committees insti- 
tuted by that body, the result of the action of which 
constituted in effect, the entire work of the Congress, 
\nz: The Committee to state the rights of the colonies 
in general, the several instances in which those rights 
had been violated and infringed, and the means proper 
to be pursued for obtaining a restoration of them; and 
the Committee to report and examine the several stat- 
utes which affected the trade and commerce of the col- 
ony.'* 

For any faint glimpse of these fifty gentlemen as 
the}^ existed in the flesh, each accustomed to leadership 
in his own province, speaking, clashing-, counseling 



*See Appendix — Hooper, Sullivan of New Hampshire, and Hop- 
kins of Rhode Island, were the only persons who served on both 
Committees. John Adams's Works. Vol. H. p. 375. 



29 



upon those wei^'lity papers that were to call out the 
high eulog'y of the o-reatest statesmen of the ag^e, we 
must rely on the diary of John Adams, and various 
fragmentary papers. It is astonishing- to us, to whom 
each scrap of information about their deliberations is 
immortal, that the}^ treated their work so lightly. 
But it was not an ag"e of self-consciousness and 
attitudinizing' and personalities. Upon Adams, chiefly, 
we must depend for our knowledgfe of their social lives, 
their chats, discussions and revels in the taverns and 
coffee houses; their dinings and merry-makings in the 
hospitable homes of the Quaker City, .surrounded by 
those stately, hig'h-waisted dames, with shapely arms 
and snowy necks, whose higdi-bred faces look out at us 
from wrinkled canvass with something of the fadeless 
beauty that befits the mothers of immortal sons. 

" Friday, October 21st — dined at Library Tavern 
with a dozen gentlemen from the West Indies and the 
g^entlemen from North Carolina. Fine turtle and ad- 
mirable wine, "t 

' ' Frida}', September 23rd. Dined with the gentlemen 
from North Carolina at Chief Justice Allen's." 

"Thursday, September 2^Hh. Dined at home with 
the deleg'ates from North Carolina."^' 

This little g'limpse of these men, eating- and drinking-. 
surrounds them with human interest to us. They are 
no long'er dignified machines, l)ut men of flesh and 
blood. 

A. M. Hooper relates the rather puerile story that 
Hooper's first speech in Congress lasted one-half hour, 
and produced a profound impression upon the members, 
accompanied, however, by the unpleasant remark, that 
they were surprised at so much eloquence from a dele- 

f Works of John Adams Vol. II. p. 400. 



30 



g"ate from North Cafolina. The following bit of testi- 
mony, from the diary of John Adams, to Hooper's posi- 
tion in this body, strange to say, has escaped the vigi- 
lance of all our historians:* "The deliberations of this 
Congress are spun out to an immeasurable length. 
There is so much wit, sense, subtlety, learning, elo- 
quence among ^ifty gentlemen each accustomed to lead 
in his own province. Johnson of Maryland has a clear 
and cool head; Galloway, Duane and Johnson are sen- 
sible and learned, but cold speakers; Lee, Patrick 
Henry and Hooper are the orators\ Paca is a delibera- 
tor; Chase speaks warml}'^; Mifflin is a spirited, 
sprightly speaker; John Rutledge don't excel in learn- 
ing" or oratory, though he is a rapid speaker; Dyer and 
Sherman speak long' and often, but heavily and clum- 
sily." It was high praise to be rated even the third 
member of that trio, and the descendants of William 
Hooper should never forget this sincere tribute to his 
power by one who was himself the colossus of the de- 
bate for independence, and one of the most powerful 
speakers of au}^ age. 

The first Continental Congress adjourned October 
26, after a continuous session of forty-nine days. 
The secx^nd Congress assembled May 10, 1776. Wil- 
liam Hooper, Joseph Hewes and John Penn, Caswell 
having resigned his appointment, appeared as the dele- 
gates from North Carolina, and took their seats June 
1st, 1775. It was the beginning of a close and tender 
friendship and sympathy between Hooper and Penn in 
all the trying duties of the hour. An added dignity 
and sacredness shall hereafter adhere to this immortal 
spot because the bones of these two patriots, long buried 



'Woi'ks of John Adams. Vol. II, p. 396. 



31 



in remote, unmarked graves, now lie here together, one 
in death as in life, cared for by patriotic love, marked 
by imperishable gfranite, secure in twin renown. 

A wholl}' different and more ag-gressive spirit perva- 
.ded the Congress of 1775. A year of debate, of ques- 
tioning-, of l)loodshed, had left its mark upon the coun- 
try and the deleg^ates. Thougdit and action, not en- 
treaty, now filled the air. While no man could forecast 
its marvellous career of fifteen momentous years, dur- 
ing- which the new life of humanity was to slowly re- 
veal itself amid the fire and blood of an awful time; 
though none could foretell its mig-hty achievements, its 
vicissitudes, its glory and its shame, yet, the most friv- 
olous felt that a council of men had come tog-ether, 
which w^ould change the course of history and the fate 
of empires. It would be mere boasting to claim for 
Mr. Hooper a foremost, commanding influence in the 
Continental Congress. He was a strong, eloquent, 
earnest man in a company of giants. If he had hailed 
from Massachusetts, Virginia or New York his influ- 
ence would have been increased ten-fold, for the Con- 
gress was not a body of peers in the modern theory, 
legislating- for a Union of equal states. It was an as- 
semblag-e of delegates representing- a temporary com- 
pact of diverse and jealous colonies, drawn together, 
by common dangers, and groping-* for the g-lorious se- 
cret of federal unity. Its duties were executive as well 
as legislative, and the states great in wealth and com- 
mercial power took the lead by common consent. The 
committees, which both originated legislation and exe- 
cuted it, were not appointed by the president, but were 
chosen by ballot, and the members took rank on the 
committees according to the number of votes received. 
Mr. Hooper was elected to serve on twenty-eight com- 



32 



mittees dnringf the time of his service, some involvi: 
measures of the deepest interest, and was associat 
on them with Jefferson, Franklin, Adams and oth 
leading" members of the House." He was chairman 
the committee to draft an address to the inhabitants 
Jamaica, and his lang^uag'e in that address has about 
a sug-gTstion of the antithetic, dehant periods of t 
Declaration. With Dr. Franklin, Robert Morris a 
Lee, he formed the secret Committee of Foreig'n Intt 
course — perhaps the most important working- comm 
tee instituted by the Cong^ress. They were authoriz 
to conceal important information from Cong-ress itse 
to keep secret ag^ents abroad, to make ag'reements, ai 
thus secretly to pledgee the faith of the nation. T 
only fragfment of any speech made by Hooper is to 
found in the memorandum kept by John Adams in t 
discussion of the question whether each colony shou 
have one vote, and the status of slaves in determinii 
representation. It is a mere reminiscence of Mr. A 
ams's, but there is much \yis(lom in the g^eneral thoug'h 
" Aug-ust 1, 1776, Mr. Hooper: ' North Carolina is 
striking" exception to the general rule, laid down ye 
terday, that the riches of a country are in proportion 
the number of inhabitants. A g"entleman owning" thn 
or four hundred neg"roes does not raise more corn tha 
it takes to feed them.* A laborer can't be hired for le^ 
than twenty-four pounds in Massachusetts bay. Tl 
net profit of a }2c§to is not more than five or six pounc 
per annum. I wish to see the day when slaves arc )2i 

*John Adams served on ninety committees. Works of Joh 
Adams, p.498. 

Hooper served on six committees with Jefferson, four with Joh 
Adams, three with Samuel Adams, four with Franklin, three wit 
Jay, two with L<ee, three with Ivivingfston, two each with Heirriso 
and Sherman. See Appendix. 



33 



}frct'ssary. AVliites and slaves cannot work tog-ether. 
The ne,ij-ro works under the impulse of fear and has nc 
care for his master's interests.' " "' 

The duties of a continental deleg-ate were quite as 
arduous without as within the halls of Cong^ress. The 
correspondence oi our delci^ation with the Council of 
Safety o-ives a tolerably clear idea of the nature and 
diversity of these duties, and is strang-ely mixed with 
patriotism, small gossip, surmise, business and advice 
as to military affairs.'" Hooper and his colleagues were 
not leg'islators alone. They combined the functions of fi- 
nancial and purchasing" agents, of commissarj^-g^enerals, 
reporters of all gf'reat rumors or events, and, ing'eneral, 
bore the relation to the remote colony ol" ministers res- 
ident at a foreign, court. The}" were indeed busy men. 
The Cong'ress sat from nine until se^'en. In the remain- 
ing" hours they found time to do all the thingfs recorded 
in this g"ra])hic and interesting" correspondence. The}' 
kept the Coimcil of Safety well informed as to the 
progress of affairs; they neg"otiated for clothing" and 
supplies for our troops. In the course of only two 
months they expended live thousand pounds in pur- 
chasing" horses and wag"ons which they sent to Halifax 
loaded with every conceivable thing" — from the E^ngflish 
Constitution to the wag"oner's rum— pamphlets, sermons, 
cannon, gunpowder, driniis and pills. They scoured 
Philadelphia lor salt-pans and essays on salt making"; 

*V/orks of Jolin Adams, p. 4'18. 

•jMr. Hooper spent .sixteen months in actuiil service in Philadel- 
phia. He was absent «ix months in the discharjre of other public 
duties Thirty. two letters passed between the delei^ates and the" 
Council of Safety lietween Feb. 1, 1776 and Nov. U,. 1776. Eleven 
of these are from Penn and Hevve.*;, seven from the three conjointly. 
and fourteen from Hooper, written between Oct. 26 and Nov. 16. whei) 
he alone represented the colony in Philadelphia" — Col. Rec. Vol. 10. 



34 



they hagfg'led over the price of gray mares, and cursed 
the incompetency of slothful blacksmiths whose aid they 
soug-ht. Such work as this did not enhance their repu- 
tation on the iloors of Cong^ress, but it meant life or 
death to the wearied, ill-paid soldiers in the iield. The 
following' letters from the tenth volume of the Colo- 
nial Records throw lig^lit on this stag'c of their life. 

I .clicr from the North Carolina Dt'h'oates in the' Contiiit-ntal Cotigrt'ss 
to the rro-c'iiiciii! Coiituil of Safety. 

Honoured Siks, 

* "" * ■" In addition to the several ai^ticles which you 
recommended to our care. We have bestowed our Thouj^dits upon the 
iiubjectof procuring- Cloaths for our Troops. Men as prompt as they 
are, to encounter ever3' difficulty and danger, deserve every comfort 
and convenience that the present pittance of Stores can be procured 
foi- them in this part of the Continent. The Soldiers raised here, not 
from any advantag^es which they derived from nature in point of 
appearance, but from beiny dccentl}' clad, and covered from the In- 
clemency of the ^mi & Rain, shew themselves to great advantage, & 
rival retiular Troops in decencj"^ and cleanliness, whilst ours 
Avith scarce a shirt to their Backs, feel forcibly- the effects of poverty, 
tliey become dispirited from negflect, & feel an inditference to a ser- 
vice which so sparingU' recompenses the exertions of those who 
fight for it. and brave every darig-er to protect the liberties of their 
Countrj-. (Aware of the difficulty of procuring- Cloathing- in Carolina, 
We have prevailed upon the Congress to send a supply from this, & 
by their direction have this day employed one .of the continental 
Commissaries to have made up for them as many C/oth Short Coats, 
Breeches, Stoe/xi>/,<^s. Shoes a?:d Shirts as maj- teiid to relieve their ur- 
g-ent wants & prepare them to meet the Weather when it becomes 
less favorable to their present destitute Situation. It will take some 
time to collect the materials & have them m.-ide up lor use. but be 
assured nothinif shall be wanting- to urge to completion this neces- 
sary business, «fe to forward the articles as soon as they are in readi- 
ness.) We shall not omit to send Hats, if besides these 3'ou should 
think proper to order Canteens, Cartouch boxes or an3' other niili- 
itary appendag-es, (Arms excepted). We shall pa3' a punctual Obe- 
dience to such orders. Arms not 1.»eirig- to be procured. 

The 4 Tons of Gunpowder mentioned in the resolve inclosed will 
be forwarded as soon as Wag-g-ons and Horses can be purchased. ■* 



35 



* * The field pieces cannot be had. * * « * Battering'- camion 
cannot for some time be sent to YOU. * * * * With plenty of iron 
in our province, and the j^round work of a foundarv at Deep river, 
could we possibly procure an able operator to carry on the manufac- 
ture of Guns, it would be an Object well worthy' publick attention, 
& merit almost any expense that nii^-ht attend the carryinif so use- 
ful a desig-n into execution. •■■ * * '•■ 

We have constilted Doctor Franklin and others upon the subject 
of Salt pans. He has promised us his Assistance in preparing- the 
plans, and directini,'' the mode '»f luakin;; tJie pans. As soon as an 
operator can be found wlio will undertake them. We shall set him 
at work. " * * "' We shall find j^reat dilhculty to hire men to 
drive our Waj^yons. - * * 

We beg" leave to press up(jn yt>u as a nuitter of the most serious 
concern the manufactures of Saltpetre, common salt and Gunpowder. 
Should Britain spread her immense Navy along- our coasts our sux)- 
plie.s from abroad are at an end. Upon ourselves must we rely, and 
should we fall short in our attempts, the consequences are too alarm- 
ing to predict & must be obvious to every one. * * * * 
With great respect Sir 

Your most obedt Servts 

WII^Iv HOOPER 
JOSEPH HEWES 
JOHN PENN 

Penn to Thos. Person. Feb. 14. 177i): "My first wish is that 
America be free : tlie second that we may 1)e restored to Great Britain 
in peace and harmony upon just and proper terms. I send you a 
pamphlet called "Common Sense." pul)Hshed atuotith ago." 

Letter from Penn, June 28, I77(y. "The first of July will bean 
era of great importance, as that is the day for debating- the g^reat 
and important question of independence, aixl from what I have seen 
there is no doubt but a total separation will take place as all the 
colonies except Maryland are for it, and the inhabitants there are 
ct)ming- over fast." 

Durin<J- a part of the spring- and summer of 1776 Mr. 
Hooper was absent from Cono-ress attending- the Hali- 
fax Convention, acting- with those who declared for 
"independency" in xVpril, and engag-injj- in the cam- 
paig-n ag-ainst Clinton on the Cape Fear. ICm- 



36 



ploved in these duties, he did not reach the Cono-ress 
durin:>- the o"reat debate and vote on the question of in- 
dependence, but happily for his fame, did arrive before 
the Declaration had been slg-ned. Clad in tijose gar- 
ments which TrumbuH's g-enius has immortalized, he 
was one of the fifty-four g-entlemen who g-atliered to- 
g-jth-n- on Anofust 2, 177o, to afrix; their names to the 
o-reat document. While notliing" is so dillicidt as the 
a!)Hity to transport one's self into the actual moo«l 
of rnind in which g-reat historic acts are performed, 
we mav be sure the least serious among* these men must 
have realized that he was sig-ning- a death-warrant, or a 
title deed to immortality. Yet with firm, clear hanils, 
witli hig'h purpose and undaunted resolution, the trans- 
action v^as accomplished. American tradition has lit 
up the deathless scene with Hashes of g'rim wit nr.d 
rough mockery of fear and death -investing*- it wiih a 
touch oi humanity to which v%-e all lovingdy cling-. "We 
must hang- together or we will hang- separately," e.v- 
clainieo the slender IClbridgfe (lerry. "It will be all 
over with me in a n:oment. but you will be kicking- in 
the air a half-liour after I am gone," responded the 
p(*r{)v Iiarri;-on with l)older humor. 

It is not easy to give expression to the transcendent 
importance of this latest ivlagua Charta in human 
affair >. A rhetorician may readily see in it a note of 
loudness, a scream of dehance. a rather dazzling; array 
of g-litlcrir.g- g-eneralities, l)ut it is almost as absurd to 
cavil at it as it woidd i)e tc; criticize the Ten Ccnnmand- 
mcnts. It seized all the ho]^es and visions and beliefs of 
humanity alxiut freedom, and with dynamic energfy com- 
pressed them into one shini;\<^- tablet and flashed them be- 
f()r<,' the ]or,gi!]g- eves of men. It was the last cli:^7-:C*r 
in llic scriptures of ICnglish liberty, the cuhnination of 



37 



the working- out tlirouo-h man^/ centuries of the pro])lem 
of self-gfovernment. Basing- j^^overnment on popular 
soverei.^-nty and personal equality, it shall stand for- 
ever, a house of refuife to the hunted and fleeing- sub- 
jects of injustice, and a rebuke and a stumbling- l)lock 
to the tyrant and the oppressor. The men who in- 
dorsed it with their names on that summer day achieved 
immortality at a bound, and wrote their names where 
all nations shall behold them, and all time cannot eiface 
them 

In the first decades of this ccntur}- our g-randfathers 
were filled with indig-nation and astonishment at Mr. 
Jefferson's remarkable letter to John Adams in which 
he declared that "there was no g-reater Tory in Con- 
gress than AVilliam Hooper."' Jo. Seawell Jones, cliok- 
ing- with rag-e, rushed to the rescue in his celebrated 
Defence of North Carolina and with an uncommon 
mingding- of invective, passion, partisanship, critical 
power and insight, effectually dispose<l of his gfreat 
antagfonist. It is no part of my purpose to revive this 
ancient controversy. Tlie charg-e on the face of it was 
absurd. No man who wore two faces could have 
masqueraded before the eagle eyes of Ashe, Harvtw, 
Harnett and the patriots of 177(), and won their love. 
It is a hard thing- to say of so illustrious a man as Mr. 
Jefferson that he had strang-e moments of liability to 
post-mortuary slander, but the poisonous scraps of the 
"Anas" and the researches of two generations into liis 
accusation against Hooper abundantly and mournfully 
attest its truth. Mr. Hooper's mental attitude toward 
the idea of independence, is a matter of vital interest to 
our people, however, and happily for his reputation, his 



*Jefferrion to Adams, July 9, 1819. Jon(>s'.s Defence p. 2., Intro- 
duction. 



38 



private and confidential correspondence reveals this atti- 
tude in a most complete and perfect wavr "Before April 
19, 1775" said Thomas Jefferson himself, "I had never 
heard a whisper of a disposition to separate from the 
mother country." "When I first took command of the 
army (Juh^ 3d, 1775) I abhorred the idea of independ- 
ence, " said George Washing-ton. Over one year before 
these words were uttered, April 2(), 1774, Hooper wrote 
a letter to James Iredell in which occurred the follow- 
ing" prophetic words: "'They (J he eo/o^nes) are stridiuit- 
fast to i}idepe}idenee, (Did ere long'zi'ill build aii empire 
npo)i the rni)is of Great Britain; zvi/I adopt its Consti- 
tntion puri^ed of its impurities, a)id froyyi a)i experie)tee 
of its defeets ifitt (^-/lard ai^miust those ez'i/s zchieh 
have 'Jdsted its vi§r)r.'\ 

This is the most noteworth}^ personal letter of the 
Revolution. It antedates all known expressions on the 
subject of separation, and confers upon William Hoop- 
er the proud title of the'Pro[)het of American Inde- 
pendence. And this is not the only evidence : 

HOOPER T(^ IREDELL. 

Wii^MiNGTON, June 21, 1774. 
M}' de;irSir: — 

I was favored with yours bj' the express. Since iiiy arrival in 
town I have been so occupied in Boston affairs tliat I have had scarce 
time to run over Cato. I have had just taste enough of it, to g'ive 
me hig'her "g-out"' for a more particular attention to it hereafter, 
when I shall g;ive 3'ou my sentiments ver^' candidly upon it. 

I am absorbed in the distress of mv native country . The inhu- 



*From April 1774 to Feb. 1776 there are nine letters of Hooper's to 
Jas. Ii^edell and Samuel Johnson — his clcsest friends — on this 
subject. 

fLife and Correspondence of James Iredell Vol. I. p. 196. For en- 
tire letter see Jones's Defence p. .-<14. 



manity of Britaiti can be equalled b\' notliiii}:,'- but ils niistakon policy. 
The only apoloj^y I can fiud for them, is to char^-e the depravity' of 
their hearts upon the weakness of their heads. 

Infatuated peoplel Do they imag-ine that Ave will make a tame 
surrender of all that au honest man ouyht to liold dear Avithout a 
strug-gle to preserve; and that our pretentions to freedom are chim- 
erical — without being- founded in Right and living only in empty pro- 
fession? * * "' " ■•■ * * * * * * 

Adieu, my dear sir. I have only time to assure 3'ou that, atnidst 
the distresses of this country, nothing can tend more to lessen the 
melancholy share I take in them — than to hear frequently from 
you. 

I am 

Yours, with sincere esteem, 

WIIvTv. HOOPER. 

HOOPER TO SAMUEI^ JOHNSTON. 

Phii.adki.phia. May 23 1775 
"This city ha,vS taken a deep share in the insurrection which is so 
g'enerallj'- diffused through the continent. Men, women and childreiT 
feel the patriotic glow, and think every man in a state of reproba- 
tion bej'ond the ]iower uf liea venlj' mercy to forgive, who is not 
willing- to meet death rather than concede a tittle of the Congress 
creed.'' 

HOOPER TO JOHNSTON. 

Phii.a. June 5. 1775 
"I wrote you lately by Mr. Hewes' vessel. I have notliing- to add 
but to request of you to exert yovir utmost intluence to prevail upon 
the people to enroll tliemselves in companies; sacred]3' to attend to 
the preservation of what little gninpowder remains ^imong- them, 
and to rest assured that no terms will be obtained from Lord North 
but what are purchased at the point of the sword." 

HOOPER TO JOHNSTON. 

Phil. Feb. 6. 177G. 
•'Do v>^e not play a game where slavery or liberty is at stake? 
* * * * Were I to advise, the whole force of the colony should be 
collected read3' for immediate action when called for: and l)id adieu 
to ploug-h shares and pruning'- hooks till the sword could find its scab- 



40 



bard with safet3^ and honor to its owner. M3' first wish is to be free; 
m^' second to be reconciled to Great Britain . God t;-rant that both 
may soon take place. Measures must be taken immediately. Ere 
this tile troops of the enem^' are in 3^our country: ma^- _vou stand 
forth like men, and fii^-ht the cause of liberty, the cause of the living- 
God." 



HOOPER TO JOHNSTON. 

Piiii.A. Sept. 27, 177(1. 

"Do not mistaks me, — m_v spirits have not failed uie. I do not 
look upon present ills as incurable; I never considered the patii to 
libert3' ;is strewn with roses; — She keeps her temple upon the hii,'!!- 
e.st pinnacle on earth. They who would enter with sincerity and 
pure devotion must climb over rocks and fri.uiitful ]n-ecipices, cov- 
ered with thorns and weeds; thousands must perish in the pursuit! 
But the prize is worthy of the fati.ij-ue and hazard: and the adven- 
turer will count with triumph the f;-lorious wounds that have pur- 
chased to him and to posterity the invaluable blessini,'-." 

Mr. Elooper, as may be seen from these letters, did 
not welcome bloodshed and war nor deli<i1it in hanjjrinjjf 
over the preci])ice oi separatiopi, but he foresaw it all, 
and moved toward it with tmfalterino- stej). Lilce 
Washing-ton, he loved old Knj^-land, l)ut was for free- 
dom first and reconciliation aftervxards. We sliould be 
j^dad that he was that sort (<f a man — it was the North 
Carolina in him. Your Hotspurs strut well and make 
a brave show, bnt the reluctant revolutionists have 
been the determined ones in all our history-, from Kd- 
ward Moseley in the dim, desperate be<^-innino-s on the 
Albermarle, to 2ebulon Baird Vance in the travail and 
despair of civil war. 

On April 2'^th, 1777, Mr. Hooper resio-ncd his seat 
in the Continental Con^j-ress and was succeeded by his 
friend, Cornelius Harnett.""' His decision was g-reatly 



*He had obtained leave 9f absence from Con,^:ress Dec. 20, 1776, 
and never returned. 



41 



deplored in North Carolina. He was then the most 
learned and eloquent man within her borders. He had 
headed our dele«-ation since the inception of the Con- 
ijfress in 1774, and all his talents litted him for useful 
service in legislative life. It doubtless cost him a 
hard strui^-gde to take the step, but it was rendered 
necessary by poverty and precipitated by his desire to 
return to his famil}', which had been without his care 
for nearly four 3'ears. There had been no money ac- 
cruing- from his profession since 1773, and the income 
of a continental Deleg'ate scarceh' sufficed to keep him, 
alone, in decent comfort. It is more than likely that 
his wife's private fortune alone stood between his fam- 
ily and need in these trving- years." 

Mr. Hooper had married in the fall of 17(>7, Miss 
Anne Clark, of Wilmingfton, daug-hter of Tliomas 
Clark, Senior, and Barbara Murray, his wife. Barbara 
Murray was a sister of James Murray, a g'entlemen of 
fortune and position and a member of the Pro^'incial 
Council under (lovernors Johnson and Dobbs,i" Thomas 
Clark, the elder, was Hig'h Sheriff of New Hanover 
county at a time when that office was hlled by the first 
g-entlemen of the province, and accumulated a larg-e 
fortune. Mrs. Hooper's brother. Colonel and Brig-a- 
dier General-by-Brevet, Thomas Clark was a brave 
officer in the revolutionary army — First Regiment 
North Carolina Continental Line. He entered the ser- 
vice with the rank of Major, Sept., 1775, and was twice 
promoted April 10, 177(), and Feb. 5, 1777. His resi- 

*Mr. Hooper owned about a do/.eii negroes in 1781. Iredell Vol. 2. 
]). 5. Dec. 20. 1776, the Con^Tess at Halifax fixed the salaries of the 
continental deleg-ates at $2000 proc. nionej* — a ver_v nieaj^re sum. 

jThe celebrated Robert Hare and Judye John Clark Innes Hare of 
Phil, were descendants of Mrs. Hooper's brother — John Innes 
Clark. 



42 



dencc was at Point Repose, in Brunswick county, and 
he was a man of lar^^^e wealth and g-reat inHuencc. 
The letters of the day abound in references to the beauty 
and streng^th of his character/'' His will dated Decem- 
ber 1792 lies before me, wherein he bequeaths thirty- 
seven neg"roes to the children and g"randchildren of 
William Hooper, besides thirty-three nei>"roes to his 
step daug'hter, Sarah Nash. 

Mrs. Hooper was a woman of plain features, g"ieat 
charm of manner and uncommon streng-th of character, 
James Iredell met her for the lirst time in June, 1778 
at her own home, and thus writes of her : 

Mas<»; Bi^Korcn, Tt!i June. 177<S. 

Afy Dear Hantiah: — I liave the ]ile;i.siire of \vritin_t,'- tu you from 
Mr. Hooper's, where I arrived about t\yo o'clock ou Tuesday. He 
was not at home, having' yone to town that morning- al)out some busi- 
ness. You may believe, therefore, I was a little embarrassed, a.-, I 
had not the least acquaintance with Mrs. Hooi^er. Rut she received 
me with such real politeness and cheerfulness, and in a manner so 
free from unineaiii'nj^' ceremony and constraint, that my awkward- 
ness soon wore off. and I entered into conversation with her with as 
much freedom as if I had been acquainted with her for 3'ears. Never 
was there in -awj woman more strong-ly exhibited the little power of 
beauty, opposed to the accomplishments of mind and behavior. Her 
appearance at first sig^ht is very ordinary; thoug^h I had been pre- 
pared for it, I confess it struck me; but I defy any one to be longf in » 
her compan3% and still retain the same impression. Her mind ap- 
pears to be hiifhly cultivated; she has read much; her sentiments are 
just and noble; she speaks with g^reat correctness and eleg"ance, 
as well as with ease; her conversation is extremely interesting-, and 
equal to high subjects. Her natural abilities appear to be very 
great: her distinctions are accurate and acute, and her knowledg-e of 
historj'. in particular, seems to be very extensive. I am really- 
charmed with her. The idea I had formed of her,- I find very far 

*Iredeirs Life and Letters Vol. 1, p. .^07. (Teneral Clarlc nnirried 
Sallie Moore, sister of Judg-e Moore, and tlie widow of (xeneral 
Francis Nash — killed at CTermantown. 



43 



inferior to her real merit. Mr. Hooper, by bad weather or business, 
wa.s detained in town till tlie next niorning^. Rut we were not at a 
loss for conversation the whole day: and thoug-h I was anxiously 
looking out for him till it was too late to expect .him, I spent my 
time very aj^recably. With liow much happiness could I staj" here 
f >r some time if 3H)U were with juel You would be delighted too. They 
seem so happy in each other, and their children; their deportment 
to me is so obliging and friendly, the situation is so agreeable (upon 
the Sound in sight of the sea), that I want nothing at present to make 
me perfectly happy but your company. The children are very fine 
ones, though none promise to be so handsome as Mr. Hooper; but 
they appear to bo sensible, are extremely well behaved, and his little 
girl (about Peggy's age). I believe, will be prettA-. 

Mrs. Hooper seems ti) have continued to impress Mr. 
Iredell most ajj-reeably, as the followinj^- quaint and 
naive excerpts from his letters to his wife show: 

" Mrs. Ho()i)er is not here (in Halifax, 1779.) so my heart is quite 
safe, and I believe will remain very secure in your possession unless 
any accident to Hooper should tempt me to wish that you had less 
health." 

"Indeed, my dear Hannah, whatever you may think of it. and 
however I may chat of other women, I can see none where 1 cannot 
make discrimination to your advantage — such sincerely is my opin- 
ion. Mrs. Hooper comes nearest — but she is not .so j^oung." 

The home of the Hoopers, called Finian, was beau- 
tifuUv situated on Masonboro Sound, eight miles from 
Wilmin|u-ton.'' In this lovely home of his own building, 
within sight and sound of the sea, surrounded by his 
books and his three young children, whom he tenderly 

*jLidge Iredell married Miss Hannah Johnston, of Edenton, sister 
of Samuel Johnston — our first senator. 

-I The place now belongs to Mv. Wiilter Parsley, of Wilmington. 
No vestige of Finian renuiins. It was meanly fired by the British 
in I77ri, and the last remains were destroyed by fire a few years ago 
The first Masonic lodge of the Province was organised at Finian. 
Mr. Hooper's lav>- office was situated <m the corner of 2nd and Prin- 
cess streets. Wilmington. 



44 



loved, conscious of Iiavino- borne an honorable part in mo- 
mentous affairs, secure in the regard of cong'enial f rieuds. 
Hooper took up the threads of his life where the Revo- 
lution had snapped them, and prepared to recoup his for- 
tunes and to aid in j^-uiding his State- When he left home 
for the first Continental Cong-ress, in 1774, a royal g"ov- 
ernor was fuminy and fretting in the Tryon palace at 
Newbern; n(.)w his former associate, Richard Caswell, 
managed the affairs of a sovereign state under the forms 
of republican government. For the next three years com- 
parative tranquility and peace prevailed over the State. 
Tory outbreaks and internal rebellion were (juicklv 
crushed, and the evils of war were confined to the 
northern provinces. The courts of law, long silent, 
were reopened, and the state laid olY into six judicial 
districts, afterwards increased to eight. His beloved 
friend, James Iredell, through his own efforts, became 
one of the Judges of the new court. "'I shall now 
open my law books," he declared. 

There is nothing lovelier in our revolutionarv historv 
than the friendship of Iredell and Hooper. Well-born, 
scholarly, refined, single-minded, law3'ers from love 
of the law and its practice, they stood for all in all to 
each other, in an isolated country and a rude age. 
Happy in each other's company, on horseback or in 
stick gigs, they traversed the new State from Wil- 
mington to Salisburv, riding the circuit of the six 
districts in their semi-annual progresses. "Life is 
supportable when Ho(t})er is with me'' savs Iredell. 
Together they endured all the hardships incident to 
their life — bad inns, crowded (|uarters, wrangling" 
attorneys, choleric judges, suspicious clients — and to- 
gether they eagerly enjoyed the hospitalities and fes- 
tivities of the cheerful homes which opened their doors 



45 



to them in Halifax. Hillshoro, Newbern and Edenton. 
In tlieir lon^' journeys thev discussed the ^reat prin- 
ciples of o-overnnient, the future of the new nation, 
strujL»-glins;- into life, or bemoaned the fatuity of the 
democratic spirit which just then was beg'inning" to 
sweep witli lawless force across the face of society. 
In their enforced absences at home, or when Mr, 
Hooper was attendiu^j" the sessions of the AssembU' to 
all of which lie belonj^ed, and in all of which he bore a 
conspicuous part, they poured out their souls to each 
other in a correspondence, happily preserved to us, which 
mirrors the life of the time and ^ives structure and 
color to an otherwise formless epoch. With sly wit, 
they punctured the foibles of their pet aljomination, 
Jud»j;e Spencer, told each other all the matrimonial 
yossip, noted the wiles and charms of certain dashing- 
young- widows, hit off in the abandon of perfect confi- 
dence friend and enemy alike, and concluded, in stately 
flourish, by sending- their compliments and o-reeting-s 
with ceremonious o-allantry to the ladies of their house- 
holds. 

Hooper to Iredell, 1784: ''En/ re nous, Betsey Hog-g- 
will probably chang^e her name before you see her, and 
for the sake of a pun — the iirst I ever made — will sub- 
stitute the food for the animal."" 

"If Helen, the fair, who sojourneth within thy g'ates, 
should have taken unto herself a help-meet, pray salute 
her in my behalf with a holy kiss of cong-ratulation. "t 
And what could be neater tlian this as an index of rev- 
olutionary mail facilities: 

Hooper to Iredell: "should this scrawl pursue the 
direction I let it off, it ma.}" reach Kdenton, but like 

* Miss Hog"g" married Mr. Hnske. 
f Miss Helen Blair, Iredell's niece. 



46 



the air balloon, its proo-ress I fear will be eccentric, so 
that it is in the chapter of conting-encies whether it 
will ever reach you." 

In more serious strain, they discussed legislative poli- 
cies, military movements, the jj'reat problems of life 
and death. " I alvva3's fear, " writes Hooper, "when 
Washing-ton does not command." "Our soldiers g-o to 
South Carolina (December 17, 1778) never to return." 
"A soldier made is a farmer lost." "I despise the 
cant of divines, the pride and hypocris}' of schools. 
There is a luxury in woe, aud I have long suspected 
the heart of a man who is above it."* They were one, 
too, in their political opinions, and lamented bitterly 
enough the unwisdom of certain legislative acts, — the 
issuing of so much paper mone} , the sending of the 
soldiers southward, and the severity manifested towards 
absentees and loyalists. There was never any weak 
despondency, however, and these two and a half years, 
with the active litigation and the home life, were 
bright ones to Hooper, so long immersed in public 
affairs. 

But the sad days were at hand. The tide of war 
now lliiwed Southward, and roared and surged over 
North Carolina. Defenseless, through the absence of 
her battalions in sister colonies, wasting under a de- 
preciated currency, impoverished by the constant 
drain from her granaries to feed the soldiers of the 
Southern armies, beset b}' intestine foes and hearing 
the disciplined tread of British soldiers marching to her 
destruction, the state seemed to await supinely conquest 
and spoliation. But it was the portentous calmness 
of desperate resolve, and the dauntless Carolinians of 



* A child of Gcorye Hooper had died suddetiU'. 



47 



1780 and 1781, with the i^riin, silent fury that has marked 
their course in every g-reat tumult, quickly hushed their 
noisy dissensions and rushed to the defence of their invad- 
ed fields. Through the murky haze of war the historic 
imag-ination beholds them, their faces lit with the joy 
of battle, like heroic Hjafures on an ancient frieze, fi^ht- 
inj^- for home and liberty. Under Davidson Davie and 
(iraham they encircled rebellious Charlotte with a 
wall of fire; under Shelby, McDowell, and Cleveland 
tkey turned back for a second time the onset of inva- 
sion on the heig'hts of King-'s Mountain; at Ramsour's 
Mill, under Locke, and all throug-h the valleys of the 
Haw and the Cape Fear under many a nameless leader, 
they crushed with iron heel the foes of their own 
household, enticed from their coverts by the hope of 
g'd'in; from the Cowpens to the Dan they held aloft, 
with stout arms and loyal hearts, their blood-stained 
standards, and here in pitched battle upon this field 
they fired the last shot at a broken and baiHed foe. 

In the less stirring sphere of civil life there is everv 
where manifest the same uproar and agon}", and as 
well the same determination and resolve. The unusual 
prominence of Hooper in all the phases of the Revolution 
caused him to remove his family from the Sound to 
Wilming'ton, at the first approach of war and to pre- 
|)are to g"o into exile himself, in the interior of the 
State.""' Through the storm of the times we catch fleet- 
ing glimpses of him, a hunted exile, driven hither and 
tiiither, seeking an asylum. At one time he may be 
seen shuddering with fear at Halifax over the fate of 
his wife and children shut up in captured Wilming- 

*rie meditated seeking- a refui;e in the French West India Island* 
but did not carr3' out his plans. 



48 



ton," or cheered by the brave conduct of his wife as 
revealed in her letters; at another, wandering- throug-h 
eastern Carolina in company with Archibald Mac- 
laine with nothing- but their clothes on their back and 
dependent for food upon the kindness of friends in 
Edenton and vicinity; now stricken with desperate ill- 
ness at Windsor and nursed back to life b}' Mrs. Ire- 
dell's gentle hands; hastening* to Halifax and Wake 
Court House to leg'islate for the life of the state and 
the reorg-anization of her scattered armies; hurrying- to 
Wilming-ton under a flag- of truce, and at last, when 
Guilford had borne fruit in Yorktown, and the tyrant 
Crai^ had been driven from Wilmington, he sits amid 
the ruins of his despoiled and dismantled home and 
writing- to Iredell tells of his broken fortune, and the 
indig-nities heaped upon his brave wife and helpless 
children. !■ 

To manv men and women of middle life, Mr. Hoop- 
er's recital of his misfortunes will serve to recall the 
sad days of '65 when the g-rand-children of the men of 
the Revolution in North Carolina had their experience 
of the horrors of invasion, rendered (hnibly bitter by the 
necessities of civil war: 

Wii^MiNCTox, February 17, 1782. 

Mv DivAR IredeWv ; — Since I left you and my other friends at Eden- 
tou, I have been involved in such a round of anxiety, bustle and fa- 
tig"ue, that I Viave had scarce a moment's leisure to devote to the duty 
wliich I owe to niA' absent connections. "•*■ ■■ * From Edenton I 
proceeded to Newbern, and immediately upon my arrival heard that 
Mrs. Hooper. * "■ and others, had been expelled from \Vilminf;ton, 
and suffered to carry with her nothin54- but their wearin*,"- apparel. 

*Wilming-ton v,-as taken by Maj. Craig-, Jan. 29. 1781, and evacuat- 
ed in Nov., 1781 a period of ten months, 
firedell, Vol. 1, pp. 442-561. Vol. 2, pp. 1-5, 



49 



* * * I immediately made provisions for following-, but before I 
g-ot off, the evacuation of Wilming-tion was announced to me. I 
then resolved to take that in m3' route, to secure, if possible, some 
of my neg-roes, and to collect what I could from the wreck of my 
property. I found that Mrs. Hooper had managed, with so much ad- 
dress, as to carry off all our household linen; blankets and all, — the 
wearing- apparel of herself and children; but had been obliged to 
leave behind all her furniture, both standing and movable. This, 
as well as my books, the British jDretended they had left in the situa- 
tion it was when Mrs. Hooper went out of town. But this I found 
to be far from the truth. Except a few articles which Mrs. Hooper 
had secreted among the friends she parted from at Wilming-ton, the 
British, had borne off everj^ article of house and kitchen furniture, 
knives, forks plates and spoons ; — an almost general sweep ; nor had 
they spared the beds to finish the business. Two nights before I 
arrived in Wilming-ton, Rutherford's iiiilitia had broken open my 
house, cut open the feather beds that remained, pkmdered the tick- 
ings, and given the feathers to the wind. ]\Iy library, except as to 
law books, is shamfully injured, and above 100 valuable volumes 
taken away. What vexes me most of all is that they have broken 
several sets of books, where the volumes were so necessarily depend- 
ent on each other, as to incike what remains useless lumber. You 
know my partiality to my books — of course my chagrin at the abuse 
of them. Three fellows of mine had gone ofl" with the British ; — 
one had been forced away bj' the tnilitia, and I had lost five other 
negroes by the small-pox. After I had drawn together my few ne- 
groes that remained, and who were strag-g-lino; in the town and its 
vicinity, and picked up the fragments of my property, I set off for 
Hillsboro'. I found my family there witli Mrs. Allen, and under 
the roof of the house which Col. Clark had provided for them, and 
making- an attempt at housekeeping- with the few articles they had 
brought, and the colonel's camp furniture. Mrs. Hooper had been 
ill for several months before she left Wilming-ton, and when she 
came out, was so much reduced by disease that there was very little 
reason to believe that she would have reached Hillsboro alive. M3' 
son Tom was under the influence of a hig-h fever. Craig, imme- 
diately upon issuing his edict of expulsion, had ordered a sergeant 
and a superior officer to take a list of mj^ property, and Mrs. Hooper 
was enjoined to quit the town in a certain number of hours, under 
pain of the Provost. She was not allowed to carry out of it a riding 
carriage, though she had two, nor a horse, thoug'-h Captain IvCgg-att 
and two others offered their horses to forward her to tha American 
camp. In this melancholy situation, Mr. James Walker offered a 
boat and Mr. William Campbell's hands to row it as high up as Mr. 



50 



Swann's on the Northeast. The ladies were seated in the boat, 
and passed throug-h the painful scene of bidding- adieu to their few 
friends, who were- not permitted to acconipanj' them, when Craig^, 
v/ho had not yet filled up the measure of cruelt_v allotted for these 
distressed women, forbade the boat to proceed. Ag-ain they came 
on shore — no house to shelter them, of their own — few that were 
hardy enoug^h to receive them into theirs. They stood in the sun for 
several hours, when my daughter, overcome with the heat, called out 
" Mamma, let us go home." Mrs. Hooper, whose firmness never for- 
sook her in the severest moment of trial, answered — "My dear, we 
have no home.,' Betsy could not support it. She burst into tears. 
Several British oificers publicly abused Craig's conduct, and said that 
such cruelty vvould disgrace a savage. Craig again shifted like the 
weathercock, and ordered the boat to go on, but would not suffer any 
gentleman to attend them, although James Walker requested it. A 
bov of about ten 3'ears old was sent up as their escort. 

* * * I must not, after reciting so man)' trifles, fail to da just 
honor to my servant John. You remember him a boA' about my 
house, to whom I was partial. He was not suffered to come out with 
his mistress; but after her r'eparture, everything was attempted to 
attach him to the service of the British. He was oifered clothes, 
money, freedom — ever3'th!ng that could captivate a youthful mind. 
He pretended to acquiesce, and affected a perfect satisfaction 
at this change of situation; but in the evening of the daj' 
after Mrs. Hooper left the town, he stole through the British sen- 
tries, and without a pass, accompanied bj- a wench of Mrs. Allen's. 
He followed Mrs. Hoojjer seventy miles on foot, and overtook her, to 
the great joy of himself and nn' family. His sister, Lavinia, whom 
perhaps you remember, pursued a different conduct. She went on 
board the fleet after the evacuation of the town, and mucn ag-ainst 
her will was foixed ashore by some of my friends, and returned to 
me. 

* "" * My brothers are both in Charleston — Tom carrying on an 
extensive trade, and making money rapidly. His wife goes to Kng-- 
land, in the spring, and he, I suppose, v/illsoon follow her. George, 
at present in suspense what to do. * * * Before this I have ex- 
hausted your patience. I must still further trespass upon you, to 
request of you to ofi^er my best respects to Mrs. Iredell and Mrs. Blair, 
my compliments to Miss Blair, Miss Peggy, and every other member 
of your good family, to whom I am under obligations too great to 
express. Remember me to Mr. und Mrs. Johnson and the dear 
children at H.ayes, — the) are ever near my heart; and I can never 
forget their goodness while God gives me power to think. 



51 



* * * Adieu, my dear Iredell, and believe ine ever, with the 
highest esteem and heartfelt reg-ard. 

Your friend and obedient humble servant, 

WILL,. HOOPER. 

In the fall of 1782, attracted by the healthful climate 
of Hillsboro, Mr, Hooper removed his family there and 
made it his home for the last eight years of his life. 
It was the busiest period of his life as a la\v\^er. Lit- 
igation was active, as it always is after war, and all 
sorts of causes — treason, confiscation, claims against 
Tories and absentees, demanded adjudication. Hooper, 
Maclaine, Iredell and Nash got the lion's share of the 
practice of the day. Once more we see Hooper and 
Iredell making the rounds of the court- towns, appear- 
ing in the leading cases at each session, and, in the re- 
cesses, extracting diligently all the pleasure there was 
to be had in indefatig'able dining and dancing. It was 
a life of intense labor, and could not long be endured 
save by men of the largest physical power. There 
were other causes, too, that rendered the life arduous, 
A violent prejudice existed in the minds of the multi- 
tude against lawyers who had so long guided affairs in 
the province, fomented in some instances by ambitious 
military men eager to rule, and surrounded with the 
glamour of war-like achievement. The mere sight of 
a lawyer was sufficient to call forth a curse from the 
tavern loungers. The}^ alone, of all the community 
seemed prosperous and busy with lucrative labor, and 
hence they were denounced as bloodsuckers and smooth- 
tongued rogues. Conscious of his own disinterested 
and patriotic services, one is inclined to forgive the 
tone of bitterness with which Mr. Hooper refers to 
these murmurings and accusations. The sublime phi- 
losophy which can bear the taunts and jeers of popu- 



V 



52 



lar injustice in dig'tiified silence, is not given to all 
men. Public approval is the bread of life to the con- 
scientious j)ublic servant, no matter how high-placed, 
or how svcure in the knowledg-e of his rectitude. 

"M}^ dear Governor," said a kind lady to Governor 
Vance, as he entered her home one hot summer day, 
weary, v.'orn and dusty, while outside the men shouted 
and the bands played, ' ' I should think all this noise 
and outcr}^ would almost kill you. " "It does, Madame, 
but if they didn't do it, it would 'plum' kill me," 
answered the Governor, crystallizing- in his homel}' 
fashion a gfreat truth of human nature. 

Thoug-h Mr. Hooper was elected to the House of 
Commons from Orang"e, triumphantly and unsolicited, 
in 1784, and ag-ain in 1786, his political career may be 
said to have closed with his removal to the upper county. 
Here he met with his iirst political defeat, and here 
he essayed in vain for a seat in the C(^nslitutional Con- 
vention of 1788, as did Allen Jones, Moore, Blount and 
other distinguished men." On September 22, 1786, he 
was appointed by Congress one of the judg'es of a Fed- 
eral Court, formed to determine a territorial contro- 
versv between Massachusetts and New York, but a 
subsequent arrang'ement between the states obviated 
the sitting of the court. i' 

For ten years the current of public oi)inion had been 
setting- away from the ^'iews ot" men like Hooper, Sam- 
uel Johnston and James Iredell, and when the tiding^s 



* He was defeated for the House of Coiuuions in 1783 bj- Col. 
Thomas Farmer — his first defeat — in consequence of imprudent 
talk by some of his friends reflecting" upon the venality of the 
masses, then called the "mob." 

f The session of 1786 was his last public duty. Sanderson's Lives 
of the SIg-ners. Vol. 7, p. 171. 



of the Treaty of Peace reached xVmerica, the}' found 
themselves the leaders of a hopeless minority in a 
chantred political order. They stood for conservatism 
and cluny- to the j^'ood thing's of the old order, while 
the aj^'e of radicalism had come. In 177() thev had bat- 
tled for a strong' g-overnment and a constitiitit)n based 
on intellig-ence and property, while the hitherto dumb 
masses, coming- dimly into a consciousness of their 
power, were clamoring- for representation.'" L<:t us 
not err b}' judg-ing' them from the summit of our polit- 
ical experience. There was not then probably a demo- 
crat in all the world, and it was still a doubtful (Ques- 
tion how ig^norance and poverty w^ould behave in poli- 
tics. Rousseau had, indeed, written "The Social 
Contract;" the notaries and notables of France were 
gfatheringf in convention, ignorant and heedless of the 
titanic forces they were seeking' to g'uidc; and here and 
there men like Mirabeau, La Fayette, Montesquieu 
and Edmund Burke had beg-un to dream dreams, and 
to voice passionate aspirations, but democracy, as 
a fixed basis of gfovernment, had no place in the thougfhts 
of men. It was not the people themselves whom 
these men feared. On the contrar}'. Hooper declares 
in one of his letters, "The people only want informa- 
tion to do rig'ht." The malig'n figure of the dema- 
g'og'ue, the curse of free institutions, was creeping' into 
political life, and these proud, erect, ing'enuous men 
stood affrig-hted at the sinister apparition. 

There is an element of infinite sadness in the atti- 
tude of all men who have lived through great revolu- 
tions. They have virtually lived in two worlds, and 
only those possessing the highest wisdom or the most 



* Iredell, Vol. II. p. 106.. 



54 



amazing thrift can survive the shock of the transi- 
tion. The shores of every newly discovered continent 
of thoLig-ht, the strand of every new era in civilization, 
are lined with the wrecks of earnest, hig-h souled, inflex- 
ible natures, to whom the past of their love is all of 
life, and the voices of the present mere babblin^f and 
lioUowness. Nor is their fanc}" wholly wrong". Great 
movements in societ}^ like great chang'es in nature, 
are marked by crudity, violence and injustice. The 
creators of the French Revolution stood appalled be- 
fore the devastating' sweep of its renovating and purg- 
ing flame. This generation in the South will never 
outgrow the horrors of the reconstruction period, when 
insolence and ignorance and crime, tossed to the sur- 
face by tiie mad waves of war, sat in higdi places and 
hurled taunts at the passing- of a social order, conse- 
crated by the life and death of a tuiique and beautiful 
race. None could then see the fair beginning of a larg'er 
and wider time. The years stretching betweenYorlctown 
and the adoption of the Federal Constitution are the 
critical years in our own Jiistory in state and nation. 
A potential nation, trembling with fear and doubt, 
was reaching out in all its parts after nationalit\^ and 
security, amid the jealous clash of selfish passions. 
All the old ties were loosened. New theories were 
being born, and flew through the land thick and fast. 
Some new ideas had gotten into the world, expansive, 
explosive in their nature, and they could not be exor- 
cised or allayed. The giant Democracy was stirring 
his limbs to enter upon his heritage, parties were 
being born and professional politicians were becoming 
necessary. Heretofore men of talent rose above part3^ 
and dominated by virtue of individual excellence. 
Hereafter the party should dominate the man. 



55 



William Hooper and men of his t3^pe did not hesitate 
or cower before the strano-e, new, strenuous influences. 
Constructive, orderly by nature, they came to the 
front, and soug-ht in purest patriotism to build up and 
org-aniz.e affairs. Hooper himself was not a leader of 
men. Eloquent, impulsive, inflexible, stainless in honor, 
he had always been more admired and feared than fol- 
lowed, and was a mere child in the hands of a Napole- 
onic politician like Jefferson in the nation, or Willie 
Jones in North Carolina. But he plead with his old 
time power for his ideas. He wished to embellish the 
dawn of our state life with a policy of mercy and mag"- 
nanimity toward the loyalists, but it was asking- too 
much of the hot blood of the time, renumberino- rav- 
aged homes, and ill-g-otten g"aias, and shrewd, avaric- 
ious merchants whom Nash and Rutherford denounced 
as "Imps of Hell;"and the North Carolina Assembly re- 
jected our virg-in treaty wherein Great Britain soug-ht 
to protect her devoted adherents. He was earnestl}', 
even bitterly in favor of a more intimate union of the 
states, and plead vig-orously for the ratification of the 
Federal Constitution in 1788.* His last letter to Ire- 
dell is a wail of reg-ret that North Carolina had refused 
to enter the roof of the new nation whose birth he had 
so triumphantly predicted in his first letter written 
fourteen years be fore, t One year and four months later 
the step was taken, and he had the g-ratification of be- 



* Great bitterness prevailed in this celebrated canvass. Mr. Hoop- 
er representing the Federalist ideas, and Major Macaulcy of 
Orang-e representing- the Republican sentiment, actually came to 
blows in Hillsboro, and Mr. Hooper was slightly worsted. Iredell, 
Vol. 3, p. 170. 

fThe correspondence of Hooper and IredeU extends over a period 
of fourteen years, from April 2G, 1774, to Sept. 2, 1788, and includes 
thirty-two letters froni Hooper. 



56 



holding- his state an integral part of the Federal Union. 
But his day of leadership was over. He lacked the 
deg'ree of sympath}^ and faith in the blundering" masses, 
and that almost divine penetration into the inevitable 
movement of popular g-overnment, necessary to a leader 
in such an ag^e of social transition. A little more pli- 
ancy, a shade more discernment, a larg^er share of that 
sublime patience which can keep its faith through un- 
promising' da3"s, and await the unfailing' rectitude of 
public impulse and the sober sense of maddened democ- 
racies, and William Hooper would have been the fore- 
most man of his state. Let us be patient with him. 
Stouter hearts than his. after many years, have missed 
that deepest wisdom. 

The correspondence between Iredell and Hooper 
ceases on September 22, 1788. The one is rising" to 
fame and liig^h office upon the Supreme Court bench of 
the United States, the other is passing- away broken in 
mind and body. For some time the desire of life had 
been weakening" in Hoopbr. The sight of a slowl}^ dy- 
ing" old lady moves him to write: "(Tod send that I 
and those I love may not ling"er out life in the habit 
of seeing" death before our e^'es without power to avail 
ourselves of his friendly offices." His fervent wish 
was not to be realized either in his own person or in the 
lives of his posterity, all of whom lived to g"reat ag^es, 
and the latest of whom, a sweet, liig"h-minded, "other- 
worldl}^" woman has just passed to her reward at the 
ag"e of seventy-five." 

In alternate labor and illness, cheered by his heroic 
wife, the tv,'o 3"ears pass on, and on Monday nig"ht, 
October 14, 1790, in his fortv-eig^hth vear, on the date 



*Mary Elizabeth Hooggr — his g-reat-g-rand-dauj,'-hter, died June 2. 
1894. 



57 



prcccdinj^- the date fixcl for the marriag-e of liis onlv 
dauo-liter, his life <^-oes out in unspeakable g-looni and 
sadness. For one hundred and four years he has slept 
in the (juiet cliurch-yard at the ancient capitol of Hills- 
boro. Now he sleeps here, on the field where the o-reat 
Declaration was translated b_v valor into fact, cared 
for by reverent patriotism and immortal with his broth- 
ers- in civic and martial fame."" An unbroken line of 
disting-uished and useful men has kept his name fresh 
and honored in our annals for three ""enerations — A. 
M. Hooper, scholar and g-entleraan, .Johnston Hooper, 
author and humorist, Doctor William Hooper, divine, 
educator, dind, /acilc princcps, the foremost prose writ- 
er yet born in the state; and John DeBerniere Hooper, 
accomplished Greek scholar, whose classic face and beau- 
tiful character are lield in tender reverence by all Uni- 
versit}' men. 

Ivet me not conclude without speakin^;" of Mr. Hooper 
as a man. No more fascinating" and courtl}' figaire 
graces the life of our simple, earnest past. His slig-ht, 
fragfile form, his serene, beautiful face wherein is blend- 
ed masculine strengfth arid womanly sweetness, "a face 
that ])ainters love to limn and ladies to look upon," 
stands out, like some finely wroug"ht cameo, ag'ainst a 
backg'round of chaos and revolution. In his letters we 
catch a gdimpse of the ceremoniousness, the sleepless 
deference, the delicate punctilio of an unhurrying- ag^e; 
in his merry-making's we are able to reproduce the 
stately minuet, the vanished draperies, the personal 

*Mi-. Hooper was buried in the yurdeii of his residence, lately the 
residence of the Hon. Win. A. Graham. Tlii* g-arden afterward be- 
caiae a part of- the Presbyterian Chiirchyard. His remains were 
removed to Guilford Battle Ground, at the request of Judg-e Schenck. 
April 25, 1S<)4. 



58 



royalt}" expresshig' itself in stately dig*nity, of a time 
forever i^oiie. He was a tender, sensitive, loyal, happy 
(gentleman, a fearless, forceful, viijforous minded citizen, 
a gTeat orator — a g-reat lawyer; he loved his friends 
and was b}' them beloved. Mr. Hooper could never 
have been very popular. He had a habit of being- cold 
and disdainful at times, and his graces and g^ifts set 
him somewhat apart. 

The g-reat popular leader is the people incarnate. In 
him the people sec themselves, their weaknesses, their 
aspirations, g'ifted, g-lorified, lifted up. The sight of 
such a man thrills and fascinates the multitude. He 
soothes their vanit}^ he touches their loftier life, he 
quickens their dull senses and wakes to life their slum- 
bering ambitions. Swift, resistless, chords of sympa- 
thy and love bind tog-ether the hushed throng- and their 
articulate voice, and his name is instinct wdth magic 
power forever. When he dies the little children cry 
in the streets, and around fire-sides his story is told, 
and to future generations the spell of his name ling-ers. 

Hooper was not such a man — the age somehow did 
not breed them. He loved the people of his state and 
was willing to spend himself in their service, but he was 
restive under criticism, resentful of distrust, unbending 
in opinion. He had that proud faith in family and 
breeding, which, though it hindered him from seeing 
the splendid justice of democr^c}-, taught him the 
sacredness of iioblcssc oblig-c, unfailing self-respect and 
freedom from sordidness or any sort of stain. 

The age in which William Hooper played his part 
will ahvays be invested with a peculiar and heroic 
o-randeur. ' It was an ag-e of ideas, of moral earnest- 
ness, of unpurchasable integ-rity, of faith in God. It 
was a critical, inquiritig age, seeking to find out and 



59 



formulate the sum of human rij^'hts, and to incorporate 
them into the framework of the State. The men of 
the time did their work with conscientious thoroug-h- 
ness, but happikv there is no one exclusive epoch of 
unselfish, patriotic service. Thouu^h a brilliant cen- 
tury of intellectual audacity has sw^ept the world into a 
j^rander day, there is still work for men to do, not so 
thrilling and dramatic, perhaps, but no less vital and 
far-reaching". The founders discovered, defined and 
inaugurated. It is ours to interpret, to administer, to 
perpetuate. They set the child Self-Government, 
timorous and cowering, in the midst of the nations. It 
is ours to g'uard and direct and restrain the boundless 
strength of that same old child, grown into noble and 
puissant statue with continents for his throne. 
"Wherever party spirit shall set its decrees above the 
ancient guarantees of freedom;" wherever corruption 
shall seek to weaken national vig-or; wherever intoler- 
ance and ig-norance shall dominate free thought and en- 
lig'htenment; wherever a,narchy shall hiss and stab; there 
may modern minute-men and Sons of Libert}" repeat the 
glories of their ancestr3^ In the closing years of the 
eighteenth century, the great army of humanity march- 
ing to higher things kept step to the music of the pas- 
sionate outcries of liberty, freedom and equality. It is 
our part, in a land and an age where these cries are 
facts of life and law, to teach the beauty of peace, to 
promote the education of all men and to illustrate the 
majest}' of republican citizenship. 

And now my task is done. God-like and famous for- 
ever among men are the founders of states. So thought 
and said the great Roman orator, as he gazed upon the 
marble beauty of the imperial city. Hooper, Harvey, 
Caswell, Johnston, .Tones, Ashe, Iredell, and their co- 



60 



laborers were state builders. Their passions, their 
purposes, their convictions, their dreams are molten in 
the frame and model of North Carolina. Let us hope 
and believe that their spirits hovering- upon some mount 
of faith see it to-day beneath this summer-sun — a shin- 
ing' stretch of brig-ht waters, g-olden harvest-fields, 
teeming- orchards and happy homes — a steadfast com- 
monwealth — iiirt about with beneficent laws and insti- 
tutious, ministered to by the love and wisdom of a free 
and undeg-enerate posterity — stainless still in honor, 
fruitful still in noble deeds. 



appe:ndix. 



.VrPE.M,)lX. 



CEORGK HOOPER. 

Very little is known of two of the rliildren of the Rev. AVilliatn 
Hooper of Boston, .lolni, the second son, died unmarried, and ^Jarv. 
the only dauyhter, became Mrs. Spence. 

George Hooper, the ancestor of A. M. Hooper, Georg-e D. Hooper, 
John DeBerniere Hooper and Johnston -T. Hooper, had a singular career 
during- the Revolution. Notwithstanding- the fact that he was son- 
in-law and brother of eminent patriots, and that he was appointed 
by Richard Caswell, in 17T8,t (Uerk of the .Superior Gourt for the 
Wilmington District, he remained a staunch loyalist throug-hout 
the war period. Though some coolness and estrangement naturallv 
arose between him and his brother, and liis patriot friends, Iredell 
and Johnston, he seems to have retained their love and confidence 
as a man of sincerity, uprightness and courage of conviction. 
There was even genuine affection between him and his irascible 
father-in-law, Archibald Maclaine. He was a merchant by profes- 
sion, carrying on his business with profit in Wilmington and Charles- 
ton. Mrs. Haines Waddell (nee Flemming-) writes thus of her grand- 
father : " He was calm, consistent and lovely in character. ( 'oiisin 
George considered him equal in talent and literary taste to either 
one of his brothers." His place of buri'il is unknown. 



Thomas Hooper, youngest brother of the Signer, is buried at 
Stateburg, South Carolina. He was a successful merchant in 
Charleston S. ( '. This inscription is on his tombstone: 

"Tn this tomb are deposited the rem.ains f)f 

Thos. Hooper, Esq., 

Who died August 1, 1798 

In the 48th year of his ag^e. 

The many Virtues he possessed 

Endeared him to all who knew him 

And as a (lood Citizen, an I^xcellent 

*N. C. Gazette. Jan. i?. 177.S. 

5 



r.f) 



Friend and a Kind lielution 
His loss is sincerel)' regretted. 
His nfllicted widow has caused this stone to be erected 
In memory of his virtues and of lier affection. 
■'Ah what avails it dear departed shade 
That grief with rending- sig-hs the heart invades. 
Upon the silent tomb in vain I ca 11 
Thy spirit's fled to God, the God of all." 



WILLIAM nOOPEi:, D. D., LL. D. 

There are no de-si-endaiils of William II()0}ief. the Signer, except 
those of his grandson, the late Rev. William Hooper of Noi-th Caro- 
lina. Wm. Hooper, the third, was born in Hlllsboro Aug. 31, 1792. 
His mother, n6e Helen Hogg, lo.st her husband. William Hooper, the 
second, in eiirly life aacl becamo the wife of the Rev. Dr. .Toscph 
Caldwell, President of the University. William was brought to 
(,"lia])el Hill at the age of twelve years and received the degree of 
liachelor of Arts in ISOU. In 1814 he married Frances P. Jones, 
daughter of l^dward Jones, Solicitor General of Noi-th Cai-olina. 
The record of his life shows a varied and versatile career. 

Professor of Ancient Lauguages in thf,' [Jr.iversity of 
North ( 'aroliua. 

Rector of St. .lohn's Protestant F.pisc-opal Chiu-cli in 
FayettevilhN N. ( '. 

Professor of Rhetoric and Logic. UnivecHity of Nortli 
Carolina. 

Professor of Ancient Languages. University of North Car- 
olina. 
T.i IM.."}! Profcssoi- Hoopei- left the Kpiscoital < 'tiui-cli and joined the 

l!a])tist Church. 
1838 18-lU Professor of Theology iii Fnrinan Institute. Soutli Caro- 
lina. 
ISiU 184(1 Professof of Roman Literature in Univerrily oi South 
Carolina at ( 'olumbia. actiiig. atone time, as President. 
pro Icirijiori . 
jSIG - 1848 Prc.sidei;t of Wake Fo;-est College. North Carolina. 

Between this time and the i-ivil wtiv. Doctor Hooper taught in u 
High School for boys at Littleton, was pastor of a Baptist I'hurch at 
Nev/bern, and President of Chowan PY'male lut^titute. 

Diu'ing the war he was conn;3(;ted with a school for young women 
in Favct'i'ville, N. ( '. l^rom the clo--e of the war until 1875 he was 



1817 


-1822 


182:: 


1825 


1825- 


-1827 


1827- 


J8;i7 



r.7 



rn-princi[>al of tlic Wilson Collegiate SoTiiinury. Tn 1 ST.", Dr. Hooper 
returneil to Chapel Hill in company with his son-in-law, Professor J. 
DeB. Hooper, who had l>een chosen to the chair of the Greek and 
French languag'es. He died at the scene of his early labors, August 
19, 1876 and was buried, at his request, by the side of his mother and 
President Caldwell in the University Campus. 

Dr. Hooper became distinguished throug-hout the South for schol- 
arship, eloquence and literary ability. Unfortunately he published 
no larg-e book, contenting; himself with numerous sermons, addresses 
and newspaper articles. 

His address, "Fifty Years Since," delivered before a brilliant au- 
dience at the University in 1859, has power to charm and delight the 
reader after a lapse of forty years. It gives evidence of rare liter- 
ary taste and touch, is overilowing- with delicious huinor and gives 
forth on every page the fine flavor of genuine learning- and power.* 



LIST OF ASSEMBLIES TO WHIOH WILLIAM HOOPER WAS 
ELECTED, FKOM 1773 TO 178(3. 

COLONIAL ASSEMBLIES. 

Newborn, .January 25, 1773, March 9, member from Campbelltown. 
Dec. 1, 1773, Doc. 21, " " New Hanover. 

March 2, 1774, March 30, " .. *. 

April 4, 177.">, April 8, " " " 

rROVlMCIAL CONGKESSES. 

Newborn. Aug-ust 25, 1771, August 27. member from New Hanover. 

April 3. 1775. April. 7. •" " 

Hillsboro, August 20, Sept. 10, 
Halifax, April 3, 177«, May 14. " '• Wake. 

:<ov. 12. i77(i, Dec. 2.3, " " Wilmington. 

(Did not attend.) 

C13NT.TKENTAL (,'ONGKESSES 

Philadelphia. Sept. 5, 1771. Oct. 20. mcmiber from North Carolina. 
Philadelphia. .May 10, i77f. .Tuly 4, 1776. " " " 

*I urn frreatly indebuul 1^, Mrs. S,.icr Vs'hitiiker, of K.ileiuli. Iho <rrp:i.t-.irro:it- 
pnuid-dauffhtcruf the Si.LMi.r f,,r ..lostof the treneah'Kical iiiformaljoii coiUained 
in this paper. 



68 

CONGRESS OF THE UNITED COLONIES. 
Philudelphiii. July i, ITTH. April 27. 1777. resigned. 

GENERAL ASSEMBLIES OF NORTH CAROLINA. 

Newbern, April 8. 1777. House of Commons. New Hanover 
•' April 14, 1778. •' " Wilming-ton. 

Auu-. 8. seeond session 
" Ajiril 14. 1779. third session. " 

Sniitlilield, May 3, 177!). lirst session, " 

Halifax, Oct. 18, 1779, second session. " 

Xewbern, April. 17, 1780, " " 

Wake Court House. June 1. 1781. •' " 

Hillsboro^ April 13, 1782.* 

Hillsboro. April 18 1783. 

Hillsboro, April 19, 1784. •' Oi^ange. 

Newbern. Oct. 22. second session. 

Fayetteville. Nov. 18. 1786. 



LIST OF C(3M.MITTE1']S TO WHICH HOOPER BELONGED. 
• COLONIAL ASSEMBLIES. 
Sc.si<i())i I If Id at Xcirhini. Jan. .'.'. i;;3, Alurrli ,'/. 1173. 

1. Cliairman of committee to prei);ire answer to (jOvernor"s sjieech. 
This is the first bit of Hooper's wriliii;^' we have.f It does not differ 

tCoL Rec. Vol. 9, p. 454. 
materially from the smooth, lofty, rather i,'-randiose talk of the time, 
abounding- in formalities and loyalty. l)ut failing to conceal the mailed 
hand in the velvet glove. 

2. Chairman of committee to report bill to establish .Superior Courts, 

3. Committee to report bill to establish Inferior Courts. 

4. Committee to report what laws are expired and what should be 
amended and continued. 

."). To appoint sheriffs and coi'oners and direct their duty in oltice. 
(). Committee on state of sinking fund. 

First .Si:ssi(»i nt Xnrhrrn. Ike. 4. l//.> — JJo:. Jl. 117o. 

1. Cluiirmuu of committee to i)etition King to repeal acts preventing 
our money from being a legal tender. 

*Elcclcd uiisolicitocl by ;i lie voti'. 13 out of 25. over Ma.i. U'ltUier. of Wilmiiiyloii. 



69 



2. Committee to prepai-e answei- 1o Ciovci'nor's juldress. 

3. .Tiitliciary committee. 

4. Committee to establish Supei-ioi- Courts. 
."). Committee of correspondenee. 

Snviul Si'ssioii (if III is ^[ssi'iiihli/, JLdrh „■' — xl/anii ■!'/. r,',.). 

1. CIiHinuaii of committee to pi-epare answer to Covenior"s address.* 

■'X'ol. Roc. N'dl. '). II. .ST'). A very fiiif docuir.c'iil . 

2. Committee on court bill. 

.'!. Committee to petition Kin;/ to aiuiul act preveutiny' oui- paper 
money fi-o)n beinti- a ]e;.ial tender. 

PROVINCIAL C"ON« KESSES. 

Svrond I'rorliiciKl ('omjrtss, Xiirlxrii. AjirilJ-}, IJ'/o. 

1. CtmuTiittee o!i ])ul)!ic claims. 

2. Committee to answei* Governor's address. This paper was a line 
document. See Col. Rec. V. 9. p. 120.'). 

yiiird I'rcrlncial Cniiijirss. lllllslxirc. J;'.-/. •2a-Srj,l. JO, 17ir,. 

1. Chairman of committee to prepare test oath to l)e sij;;ned by 
members. 

2. To pre])are address to inhabitants of the British Empire. Nota- 
l)le paper of the time.* 

."5. To prepare an address to the jieople of North ( 'arolinu asci'ibiii'r 
the silence of legislative jiower to (jovernor's tlig-ht.t 

4. To prepare a plan for the temporary government of the I-*rovincc. 
This was the most important (committee yet appointed by poiJular 
autlioi'ity in our annals. 

Fourth, Pi-nriiividl ('nmnrss. Ualifd.r. Aiir'd Ji, 1:^6. 

1. ('liairman of Committee to pre[)ai-c Province for wai-. 

2. Committee on war, secrecy and intelligence. 

.■{. Committee to prepare temi'orary civil constitution. 

4. Committee to i)roi)ose a tempoi-ary form of government foi- this 
jjrovince. 

5. Committee to considei' and r('[i(>r( Imsiness to be carried thi-ougli 
( 'ongress. 

*C(.1. Roc. V(,l. Kt. 1.. >0]. 
\Co\, Kec. V. 10. ,.. 174. 



70 



COMMITTEE ASSIGNMENTS OF HOOPER IN CONTINENTAL 
CONGRESSES. 

Journals of Congress, 1774. VoluniL! I. 

September 14, 1774, Williaai Hooper uud -loscpli Hewes. esquires, 
two of the deputies from North Carolina, iittended the Congress, u,u<.l 
procluced their credentials, p. !). 

Sept. 14, 1774. Ordered. That William Hcjoper and .Joseph Hewes, 
esqrs. from North Carolina, be addeil tu the conauittee appoioted to 
state the rights of the colonies, i*. !>. 

Sept. 14, 1774, Ordered, That William Hooper, esq. be one of the 
committee appointed to report the statutes, which affect the trade, 
&c. of the colonies, p. !*. 

June 7, 1775, The Congress met. On motion, Kesolved. That Thurs- 
day the 20th of July next. 177.":>. l>o observed throughout the twelve 
United Colonies, as a day of humiliation, fasting and prayer and that 
Mr. Hooper, Mr. J. Adams and Mr. i'aine. be a roi::nnittee to bring in 
a resolve for that purpose, p. 7S). 

November, 3, 1775, The Congress then, taking into consideration 
the State of South Carolina, and sundry paiiers. relative thereto, being 
read and considered. 

Resolved, That a committee of live be appointed to take thv) same 
into consideration, and repoit what, in their opinion, is necessary to 
be done. 

The members chosen, Mr. Harrison. Mr. Bullock, Mr. Hooper, Mr. 
Chase and Mr. S. Adams, p. 1(1:!. 

November, 16, 1775, Sundry papers from the general assembly of 
the colony of Massachusetts-Bay, being laid before Congress and read. 

Resolved, That these be referred to a committee of seven. 

The members chosen, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Sherman, Mr. W. Living- 
ston, ]Mr. Ward, Mr. Jefferson. Mr. Hooper and Mr. Harrison, p. 17(i. 

November, 27, 1775, Resolved, That three members be elected on 
committee to settle disputes between Connecticut and Pennsylvania. 

The members chosen, :\lr. Wythe, Mr. Jay and Mr. Hooper, p, 185. 

December 13, 1775, Kesolved, That when this Congress sliall ad- 
journ, it will be necessary to appoint a committee to sit during the ad- 
journment for the purpose of superintending the treasury, carrying 
on necessai-y correspondence, and such other services as shall be di- 
rected by Congress. 

Kesolved, that a committee of live be appointed to consider and pre- 
pare instructions for the committee above-mentioned. The mem- 
bers chosen. Mr. Jett'erson. ]Nir. Hooper. Dr. Eranklin. Mr. Jay, 
and Mr. Deane. p. 206, 207. 

December 16, 1775. A petition from sundry merchants of IHiiladel- 
phia, was presented and read; 



71 



Resolved, that the same be i-eferred to a committee of three. The 
members chosen, Mr. Morris. Mv. .Tetl'erson, and ^Ir. Hooper. ]>. 209. 

December 22, ITTo, Resolved, That Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Hooper, Dr. 
Franklin, Mr. Jay, and Mr. Deane, be a committee to examine the 
journals and laj^ before Congress a list of the matters therein that are 
ixnfinished, and which are jn-oper to be acted upon, pp 21,3-214. 

December 2<i, 1775, The reports of the committees on general 
Schuyler's letters, and the report of the committees sent to Ticoude- 
roga, being read, 

Resolved. That the same be recommitted to Mr. Dickinson, Mi-. 
M'Kean, Mr. Wythe, Mr. Hooper, Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Langdon. 
p. 21(). 

December 30, 1775, Two letters from general Washingttm, of the 
19th and 21st, enclosing a copy uf a letter to general Howe, and ac- 
companied with a number of intercepted letters, being received and 
read. 

Resolved, That the letters from thf> general, and the intercepted 
letters be referred to a committee of the. 

The members chosen, Mr. Duaiic Mr. T^'uch. Mr. Hooper, Mr. 
Wythe, and Mr. S. Adams, p. 211). 

January 10, 1776, Resolved, That a committee of live be appointed 
to take into consideration the state of these colonies, and report as 
soon as possible what number of f(jrces. in their opinion, will be nec- 
essary for the defence of the same. 

The members chosen, Mr. Duane. Mr. Lynch. ^Ir. Hooper, Mr. E. 
Rutledge, and Mr. Wilson, p. 2:13. 

January 17, 177(5. A petition from Dr. Benjamui Church was pre- 
sented to Congress, and said: 

Resolved, That the same be referred to a committee of three. The 
members chosen, Mr. Harrison Mr. Paca, and Mr. Hooper, p. 2;i.S. 

Jan. 22, 177(5, Resolved, that sundry letters from Gen. Washington, 
Lord Sterling, etc., be referred to a committee of three. The mem- 
bers chosen, Mr. W. Livingston, Mr. Hooper, and Mr. Adams, p, 244. 

Januai-y 22, 177(5, Resolved, that a committee of three be appointed 
to consider a proper method of paying a just tribute of gratitude to 
the memory of general Mongtomery. The members chosen, Mr. 
Livingston, Dr. Franklin, and Mr. Hooper, p. 244 

January 24, 177(5, Resolved, That a committee of five l)e appointed 
to prei^are an address to the inhabitants of the United Colonies. The 
members chosen, :\Ir. Dickinson, Mr. Wilson, Mr. Hooper, Mr. Duane, 
i nd Mr. Alexander, p. 14(5. 

August 20, 177(), A letter of the 18th from general Washingtcm, with 
su7idry papers enclosed, was laid belore Congress and read: 

Resolved that the same be i-ef erred to a committee of five: The 



72 



members chosen, Mr. J.efferson. Mr. Franklin. Mr. Rutledop. Mr. .T. 
Adams, and Mr. Hooper, p. 449. 

August 23rd. ITTd. A letter from Mr. Temple, of Charlestown. in 
Massachusetts Bay. was laid before Congress and x'ead: 

Resolved. That it be referred to a committee of three. The mem- 
bers chosen. Mr. Hooper. Mr. Heyvvard. and ]Mr. Stone.. ]). 453. 

August 27. 177(i, Resolved, That four membei-s be added to revise 
the journals, that any tv^^o Ije a quorum. The members chosen. Mr. 
Heyward. Mr. Hooper, Mr. Williams, and Mr. Walton, p. 4.57. 

Septembc!- 3. 1776. The Board of War brought in a report, which 
was read: 

Resolved. That two m.embers be added to the committee for regula- 
ting the post office. The members chosen. Mr. Hooper, and Mr. 
Huntington, p. 464. 

September 11. 1776. A letter, of the 7th. from .Joseph Trumbull. 
esq., commissai'y-general, with simdry papers enclosed, was read. 

Resolved. That it be referred to a committee of three and that 
they be directed and empowered to enquire into the conduct of Mr. 
I.ivingston. deputy commissary-general, in the northern de])ai-t- 
ment. The members chosen. Mr. Lee. Mi-. Hooper, and Mr. Sherman. 
]). 471. 

September 23, 177(). Resolved. That two members be added to the 
committee on the treasury: The ])allots being taken. Mr. Hoo]ier. 
and Mr. Ellery were elected, p. 44U. 

September 27. 1776. Certain resolutions of the convention of New 
York, passed the 20th of this month, being laid befoi-e Congress. 

Ordered that they be referred to a committee of three. The mem- 
bers chosen. Mr. M'Kean, Mr. Rutledge and Mr. Hooper, p. oOl. 

October 1. 1776. Resolved. That a committee of five be appointed to 
prepare and bi-ing in a xJlan of a military academy at the ainny. The 
members chosen, Mr. Hooper. Mr. Lynch, Mr. Wythe. Mr. Williams 
and Mr. .T. Adams, p. r)03. 

October, 11. 1776. Resolved. That three members be added to the 
committee of Secret Correspondence. The members chosen. Mr. Iv. 
H. Lee. Mr. Witherspoon and Mr. Hooper, p. 514. 

November 4. 1776. Resolved. That Mr. Hooper be added to the com- 
mittee to whom Mr. Bache's letter was referred, and that the said 
committee be directed to meet on that business this evening at this 
place. (A special committee of three appointed for this i>\n-pose.) 
p. 536. 

November 7. 1776. An appeal having been lodged with the secretary 
against the sentence passed in the court of admiralty, for the jiort of 
Rhiladelphia. in the State of Pennsylvania, on the. libel •• .John Barry. 
etc. vs. the sloop Betsy. &c," 



VS 152 



Vo 



Ordered. That the hearing and determining upon the said appeal 
be referred to a committee of five. The members chosen, Mr. Wythe. 
M. Paine, Mr. Wilson, Mr. Hooper, and Mr. Rutledge. p. 541. 

Nov. 18, ITTO, A letter from Juliana Zedwitz was read and referred 
to the coiumittee on the state of prisoners. 

Resolved, That a member be added to the said committee, and that 
they be directed to take into consideration the case of Lieutenant 
M'Lean who was sent to Philadelphia by General Wooster. The 
member chosen, Mr. Hooper, p. 551. 

November 27, An appeal having been lodged against the sentence 
l)assed in the court of admiralty for the State of Virginia, on the 
libel, ''Levin Jones, &c., vs. the sloop Vulcan," 

Resolved, That the hearing and determining the said ai)peal be re- 
ferred to 2\h-. \Vythe. Mr. Paine, Mr. vVilson, Mr. Hooper and Mr. 
Chase, p. 562. 

November 27, 177(i, Resolved, That tai-ee members be added to the 
committee ajjpointed to revise the resolutions relative to captures. 
The members chosen. Mr. Wilson, Mr. Hooper and ]!'.Ir. Chase, p. 
5H2. 

Decemljer 21, 177)), Resolved, That Mr. Hooper be empowered to 
examine into the state of the North Carolina prisoners, and have such 
of thein as are sick removed to a private house and kept under guard, 
and that he provide a physician to attend them. p. 581. 

December 31, 1776. A letter from William Kennon, of North Caro- 
lina to Gen. Lee was read. 

Ordered that it be referred to a committee of three. The members 
chosen, Mr. Hooper, Mr. Heyward, Mr. Harrison, p. 588. 

February 4, 1777, Resolved, That Dr. Burke be added to the medi- 
eval committee, and th»,t he be appointed a member of tiie marine 
committee, in the room of Mr. Hooper. 

Ordered, Mr. Hooper have leave to return home. p. 31, Vol. II. 

June 2, 1777, Note received from Nortii C'arolina stating that on 
July 4, 1777, T. Burke, John Penn and C. Harnett had been api)oint- 
ed delegates, p. 147. 

December 23, 1776. Agreeable to the order of the day, Congress 
elected the Rev. Mr. P. Allison, and the Rev. Mr. W. White, chap- 
lains. 

Ordered, That Mr. Witherspoon, Mr. S. Adams and ]\ir. Hooper in- 
form the said gentlemen of their appoijitment. and desire their at- 
tendance. 



ryr?! . 







P?^ ^'- 



> \> s ^ • • ' . 

/ .-:^c^-. %^/ /^k-. "-„ .-^^ f^^-, Vo^ ' .-; 





